


Sparked

by Rist



Category: Winx Club
Genre: Bloom gets a little darker as the story goes on, Canon Compliant, F/M, For the most part, I wanted to write porn but the plot snuck up on me, I write Winx fanfiction like I write Star Wars fics, Manipulation, Obsessive Behavior, Porn With Plot, Possessive Behavior, RAI dub, Rape/Non-con Elements, Shameless Smut, Sky/Bloom (mentioned), Valtor POV, but he's very polite about it, he has to lord his knowledge of every planet they visit over them or he'll die, kinda dub con at times so ill tag, no idea where im going with this, sparxshipping, they have the canon equivalent of a force bond, this aint healthy but it sure is sexy, valtor is mr exposition in this one, valtor is not nice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:15:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29607231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rist/pseuds/Rist
Summary: How dare she, howdareshe want anything lesser than him. He has blinded and ruined her friends, he has turned Andros into a ticking time bomb, he has takeneverythingfrom her! Her parents, her planet, her people; everything she lost was his doing in one way or another. How can she waste even a single thought on anyone besides him, how can she desire anything except his defeat. He should be everything to her: her reason to wake up in the morning, the reason for every one of her movements, for every single beat of her heart! She should hate him so much that sheneedshim, like water, like oxygen.She shouldburnfor him. Instead she dreams of sunlight and blond little Princes.
Relationships: Bloom/Valtor | Baltor (Winx Club)
Comments: 107
Kudos: 98





	1. Callisto

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t know any beta readers and English is my second language, so the tenses might be a little wonky. I am stretching the timeline a little, and reordering some minor events later on, but for the most part things are still canon compliant. Also, more context for certain spells and planets! World building in my porn? Its more likely than you think!

_She thinks she is being discreet._

The realization comes to him rather late. She has been following him so obviously Valtor assumed she would want to confront him. Only now, watching her from a safe distance, he understands that she didn’t intend to be noticed. Likely did not even realize she's been caught.

That changes things, of course. For one, he doesn’t feel the need to be so cautious anymore and can appreciate how _entertaining_ her attempts truly are. For someone that miraculously evaded the fall of Domino, she knows surprisingly little about stealth.

The halls of Callisto's royal palace are built as arcades, with enough room to hide among the numerous pillars. The architects of this world clearly prioritize aesthetics over functionality, when even a supposedly secure place such as the treasure chamber has to have this many opportunities for an ambush. And still, _somehow_ Bloom managed to not take a single one.

She is dressed for neither stealth nor battle, instead wearing her hair up and a somewhat formal, backless blouse that is typical for Callisto's summers. The light fabric billows behind her as she looks around, clearly lost.

Amused Valtor watches as she turns, looking down every corridor in case she has missed something. Her confusion is written plainly on her face, but she does not carry on towards the treasure chamber. Instead, her gaze seems to find his hiding place all on its own, despite the thick layer of stone that keeps him from her sight.

His eyes narrow as she takes a small step towards him. After noticing his fiery little shadow, he'd opted to forego the treasures, phasing through the walls instead and circling around. His plan was to let Bloom continue to chase him until she found the magically sealed doors of the vault, hoping she might suspect him there and bust through. It would have saved him the work of doing it himself. He didn’t take her for someone who gives up so easily. And he _certainly_ didn’t expect her to be able to locate him through walls.

Bloom takes another step, and another. Her gait is... uncertain, and when she stands before the wall hiding him, she doesn’t look victorious at having found the enemy she's been chasing. She looks confused, curious at most.

Magic pools in the palm of his hands and he prepares himself for a fight. There is a faint ringing in his ears, a buzz beneath his skin that unsettles him. He wonders if it's the fairy's doing. Did she somehow already cast a spell, undetected?

Ignorant of his suspicions, she raises a hand. Her fingertips hover over the stone, only inches away from his face. He leans forward involuntarily, studying her as she inspects the wall. The taut, humming feeling sharpens into a steady pulse so charged with magic there is no doubt it comes from her. If she touches the stone, he wonders, will it give beneath her fingers? Will the spell that allows _him_ to pass through draw her in as well? Or is she simply going to blast her way in, finally displaying the raw, untamed power the Trix think her to possess.

He doesn’t find out.

“Miss?”, a thin voice calls out and whatever perceptive focus Bloom had been in, she snaps out of it. Valtor relaxes slightly.

“Miss, you shouldn’t be down here,” the voice chides, and he takes his eyes off of Bloom for long enough to recognize the newcomer as a servant. “Princess Varanda is now ready to receive you.”

He blinks. She is a guest to the princess. Her reason for being here is, apparently, entirely unrelated to his own.

“Oh,” Bloom says belatedly and her voice seems to echo in the mostly empty halls. “Oh!”

She turns away from him, which only serves to further his bewilderment. Surely even a young, poorly trained fairy knows better than to turn her back on where she suspected an enemy only seconds before.

“Sorry, I got distracted and then... lost. I think.”

Her words carry louder, clearer than they have any right to do, but maybe it just seems that way to him after the tense silence preceding them. Her eyes, shining with _something_ , return to him for a short yet never-ending moment.

“I thought I felt...”

Her voice trails off and so does the servant; apparently not stupid enough to get involved in whatever dangerous nonsense an unsupervised Winx fairy might get into. Evidently arriving at the same conclusion, Bloom straightens her back and follows without sparing him another glance. The pulsing sensation of her presence recedes with her.

Valtor waits with baited breath, far longer than he would have under normal circumstances. When he finally does phase back into the hall, his eyes are pensive. He was wrong about the fire fairy's lack of subtlety. He discovered her because she wasn’t _trying_ to stay undetected as she followed him. Apparently she didn’t even realize she was following him at all. That is as much of an interesting development as it is worrisome.

If this connection between their powers is strong enough for her to follow blindly, he'll lose the advantage of secrecy. His plans for invading Alfea, unfinished as they may be, will have to take one more potential weakness into account. On the other hand...

He looks down the corridor through which she has disappeared. This development is _fascinating_. What are the limits to this bond? If he were to board a ship and fly blindly through the stars, would he be drawn to her position? If she performs a spell, could he know which one in advance? When he was imprisoned, might she have already felt him? Or was their meeting on Solaria what sparked all this?

He likes to think it is inherent to their powers, not bound by external factors. They are the last ones to carry the power of the Great Dragon, the first flame in the universe, the origin of all life that ever has been or will be. It is so beautifully poetic that it would tie them to each other this way. The last Great Ones, always bound to find each other, no matter where they are in this vast dimension of mediocrity. It is soothing to know, in a way.

He doesn’t follow Bloom, even though her presence has him itching for a battle. It would be entertaining to be sure, but that’s not what he wants from her. If she truly is meant to be his enemy, then she will have to be the greatest, most powerful enemy he has ever faced. And she isn’t, yet. A fight at this point would be fun, but _easy_. She is too inexperienced, too dependent on her friends, too weak to be worthwhile as of now. It would be a shame to tire of her before she could turn into his long-awaited challenge.

Sighing, he turns back towards the treasure chamber. No use in getting lost in thought when he has magic to obtain.

The doors to the treasure chamber of Callisto are easy enough to break. He doesn’t have the secret codes of Espero yet - another item on his list of spells to reclaim - but magical lock-pickers aren’t the only way to get through the seals. Burning through is less sophisticated than he would usually tolerate, but the power of Solaria's second sun is still brimming in his veins, so he indulges in it. The runes and glyphs of the protection spells wither away beneath his touch, and soon the doors swing open for him.

Callisto is a modest kingdom that prefers to stay out of dimensional politics. It has a colony on one of Solaria's moons, but that is already the extent of their contact with foreign systems. The princess was meant to attend Alfea, he heard, before deciding that even that would be too much influence from the outside.

Callisto's magic, however, has seen quite a lot of the world - when it was in his possession, at least. The Spear of the Hunt is a tracking spell of unparalleled power, with the ability to locate every sentient being in the dimension. In combination with the Eye of Callisto, a clairvoyance spell, he will be able to find and keep track of all his enemies, spy on their councils and learn their secrets.

It is incredibly versatile magic and utterly wasted on this world of self-absorbed cowards. Careful to sidestep the numerous traps - magic cancelling barriers, immobilizing darts, a spelled tile on the floor that _might_ summon a hungry bear - he walks to the main podium. Neatly displayed in glass cases rest books upon books of spells. All his for the taking. With a gust of wind he shatters the glass and throws the grimoires open, pages flipping past while he strips them of their power. In colorful beams of light Callisto's magic leaves its home and returns to his hands, leaving only empty books and broken glass behind.

He sighs at the feeling of power in his veins. Callisto is always a pleasure to visit. Without wasting anymore time he turns around, walking back towards the entrance.

If he hadn't been so distracted by absorbing the spells, he might have noticed the tension growing in this recently discovered connection.

“There!”, a shrill voice exclaims, “That's him!”

Princess Varanda of Callisto stands in the doorway - flanked by two dozen soldiers and a shocked dragon fairy.

“Valtor,” the latter scowls, the heat of magic making the air around her shimmer. He returns her gaze with narrowed eyes. The connection between them pulls taut, inescapable and all but vibrating with power.

“He took my magic!”, the increasingly annoying princess howls and clutches her scepter, “Guards, redhead! Do something!”

The soldiers are quick to follow her orders, but Bloom is even faster. Eyes blazing with fury she transforms and is in the air before the royal guard can even fully raise their spears. He grins, anticipation getting the better of him, and catches her attacks with one hand. They crackle and burn between his fingers, charging with his own power until he throws them back at her. She swerves to the side at the last moment and the spells hit the ceiling, breaking through with a force that makes the castle walls shake. He takes a moment to marvel at the beauty that is their combined power.

“Surrender!”, the captain of the guard shouts and his subordinates point their weapons at him, ready to shoot. “You are trapped! Return the stolen spells at once or we will fire!”

He has to suppress the urge to roll his eyes.

“On the contrary,” he says with a cruel smile, “you are the ones who are trapped.”

A wave of his hand and the doors to the treasure chamber slam shut, locking the shrieking princess out and all others in. The soldiers, to their credit, are not ones to make empty threats. Light beams shoot from the ends of their spears, arching through the air and heading straight for him. He sidesteps the first two and deflects the next ones, the last of them straight at Bloom, who tried to send her attacks directly behind the light beams to disguise them.

“A dirty trick from such a righteous fairy?” he clicks his tongue, “Why, Bloom, I am impressed!”

“Oh, not yet!”, she snarls. “But you will be, when I am done.”

He smiles and wants to join her in the air – all the best fights start mid-flight, in his experience – but the soldiers have recharged their weapons and are once again firing at him. They are quickly turning into a nuisance, and he has no patience for those. Ironically enough, he has the home advantage in these halls. He doubts the guards have ever set foot into the treasure chamber – it is reserved for royals and thieves exclusively. He on the other hand knows all the traps hidden among the shelves and chests.

With a well-aimed spell, he pushes over a near sculpture. It crashes to the floor, right below Bloom – and right onto a hexed tile. Light flashes, and suddenly the fairy is face to face with a giant, angry creature. It's not quite the wild bear he expected, but it looks close enough and its claws are sharp nonetheless. Bloom screams, the not-bear roars and Valtor finally has the time to focus on the soldiers.

Two are trying to engage him in close combat, thinking themselves safer from his spells when he doesn’t have as much room to direct them. They fly back with a push and twist of his hand, ribs cracked and spears shattered. A combustion-curse sends the next four after them, and a row of quick-paced successive attacks makes the better half of the rest run straight into a rain of immobilizing darts.

The few that remain upright and moving are easily frightened. He raises his hand, not even calling on any magic, and they flee in terror. One of them is unlucky enough to trip another security measure: starting at the walls, the floor begins to simply... drop. Tiles disappear one by one, falling into the black abyss below, and whatever spell is responsible for it eats itself through the entire room, closing in on the center. Screaming the remaining guards fall into the dark, quickly followed by their defeated comrades. Valtor walks away, unhurried, until he stands upon the stone podium that makes for the center of the room. The ground-eating spell fizzles out at the borders of the circular elevation, leaving of the treasure filled hall only the mostly empty, maybe twenty feet wide center. He looks down into the darkness. Wherever the drop ends, he doubts it is lethal or, much more importantly, harming the fallen treasures. Royals are so very protective of their jewelry.

Something sets off warning bells in his mind and he whirls around, just in time to dodge the ball of fire aimed at his head. Bloom stands at the opposite end of the podium, both hands burning with magic and mostly unharmed. The not-bear apparently found its master in gravity, falling alongside the guards and the floor.

“Looks like it is just the two of us, now,” he notes with barely disguised pleasure. Bloom takes that as an invitation.

She clashes against him with the full force of her body weight (which isn’t much) and her magic (which is barely more). Apparently she learned from her earlier attempt; she doesn’t fire spells at him, instead keeping them tied to herself so he cannot use them against her.

“This is for Stella,” she says with enough fury in her voice to intimidate an Omega snake. He has no time to wonder which one of her friends she is referring to, because he has to sidestep another fistful of magic. “And for Layla!”

This one he remembers: the overconfident princess of a doomed world. As rumor has it, she managed to break his blinding curse only days after he cast it, but that doesn’t seem to pacify Bloom. Her wrath is like a living thing, he can feel it echo through their connection.

“Is that all?”, he taunts her, “Don’t tell me I've only cursed two of your little friends! I must be rusty.”

She attacks him with both hands at once, but he anticipates it: each of her fists is caught in his palms. Her magic blazes against the shield of his, brilliant and ultimately useless. Her eyes widen in surprise and he has to smile at her reaction. He does not smile anymore when she stomps a foot to the ground and kicks the resulting flames into his direction. Forced to retreat he let’s go of her hands and she brings more distance between them, before resuming her newfound strategy of rerouting her magic through the ground. He internally applauds her adaptability and blocks the wave of fire she sends over to him, replying with a blast of his own. What she lacks in strength she makes up with creativity, managing to keep him on his toes for much longer than he expected. Not that he expected much of her to begin with.

In the end, he manages to lure her into the air where she can’t transmit her attacks through something else. He throws an orb of light in her direction and she dodges, but it wasn’t her he'd aimed at. Directly behind her, below her path of flight, his spell collides with a trap trigger. A field of energy is projected into the air and she flies right through; the magic cancelling spell takes effect immediately. Mid-air her transformation gives out and she falls, landing hard on the sand colored stones. She gets up surprisingly quickly, eyes finding him in time to see another attack coming. He keeps her on the run, like a cat playing with its prey, before finally maneuvering her over another trap. An immobilizing dart hits her in the back, another in the shoulder, and before she knows it, she is frozen to the spot. He lands beside her and appraises his work.

She was caught mid-movement. One arm is raised to shield herself from the darts, the other balancing her out. The immobilizing spell does not span her entire body - it is meant to trap, not to kill after all, and most species need to breath to survive. Her hands twitch, eyes blink in panic and her chest heaves with fast breaths, but other than that, she is motionless.

“I have to admit,” he says as he lands, shaking residue ash from his sleeves, “you are an impressive opponent, little Bloom.”

He brushes her bangs out of her eyes so he can look at her. Even immobilized she manages to glare at him.

“For a little while, at least.”, he adds.

“This isn’t over.”

It takes him a moment to realize that she spoke. The spell isn’t supposed to allow for speech, in case the captive knows a verbal counter spell, yet the words leave her lips all the same.

“You'll have your little victories,” she continues, jaw working against the magical constraints, “but in the end, you'll lose. I've faced worse than you.”

He circles her, eyes blazing.

“You have faced _nothing_ like me,” he snarls, furious she would _dare_ to compare him to any of her previous enemies. “And you never will. If I were any of those lesser creatures, I would have burned you to cinders where you stand.”

He stops behind her, his back turned, to reign in his temper. He will not lose his composure in front of her.

“And I think,” he goes on, voice calmer, “that you know it.”

Falling back into his teasing demeanor, he turns back to her. During the fight, strands of hair fell out of the elaborate braids on her head and he takes them between his fingers, making her tense. Her neck is exquisitely exposed like this, and he can’t help but notice how _perfect_ his mark would look on her smooth, unblemished skin.

“You know exactly that I am unlike any other threat you have encountered,” he says softly, brushing the strands over her shoulder. “You can feel it. How our powers are calling for each other.”

“The hallway,” she realizes. “You were what I felt there!”

He smiles darkly and steps back in front of her.

“I will have my little victories; you are right about that. And I will have many of them. But at the end of the war, you'll look back to this moment and realize how naive you truly were, to think I would fail.”

“You are not infallible,” she spits, so charmingly stubborn. “You were defeated once before.”

“I was _delayed_ once before,” he corrects and raises his hand to her face, tracing over the line of her jaw. His fingertips prickle with an almost electric tension where they ghost just above her skin. As if pulled towards her. “And something tells me you don’t know half of what happened that day. Of the _cost_ of your little reprieve.”

Confusion colors her face and he laughs, taking a step back.

“Faragonda hasn’t lost her taste for secrets, I see. Oh, how delightful! To send you of all people after me, and to send you ignorant of your own history... yes, that sounds like the fairy I know.”

“What are you talking about?”

He shakes his head, grinning to himself.

“Oh no, my dear, I will not spoil your surprise. You will have to ask your _trusted teacher_ for this particular story.”

Her face looks unsettled, for a few delicious seconds. Then she closes her eyes and exhales, and when she looks back at him, she is changed.

“I will,” she says, and her bluebell eyes are _piercing_. “And whatever she tells me, it won’t shake my faith in her.”

She looks at him like he tends to look at others, studying, evaluating.

“You can’t play me against her, or my friends. It’s called loyalty. But I don’t blame you for not knowing, given _your_ choice of friends.”

She is referring to the Trix, he knows, but Griffin's betrayal still burns bright in his mind and Bloom's words only fan the flames. He scoffs and turns away, walking around her like a restless predator.

Deep down he can’t help but envy Faragonda. The old fairy had never been powerful enough to threaten him, yet she always found a way to spite him. First by turning Griffin against him, and now by taunting him with Bloom's unwavering trust in her. Somehow, the greedy old woman always has what he wants, and hoards it jealously.

And he does want Bloom, he realizes. If not her trust then her attention, her every waking thought, her entire, far too sharp mind. Because how can she be so unaffected by him when he is _consumed_ by curiosity, for her and her powers and her connection to him. It simply isn’t fair, and it won’t do.

“You want to use my own tricks against me,” he notes with a smile and comes to a stop behind her, “That is... admirable. You don’t approve of my company, you say? Do tell me more.”

“What is there to say?”, she says and he thinks she might have shrugged if she hadn’t been frozen. “The Trix are loyal only to themselves, and maybe each other. They betrayed their last leader, and they will betray you when the time comes.”

He can hear her smile.

“That, and we've defeated them so often these past two years it's getting _embarrassing_.”

It truly is fascinating how similar to himself she can be. Her powers, her temper, the way she speaks of enemies...

“So you want me to find a better ally?”, he smiles and brushes dust of the callistoan blouse she wears. “Say, are you offering yourself for the position? I would be flattered.”

“No,” she says immediately, which only angers him a little, “Never.”

“A shame. We are already so alike, and with our powers, our _connection_...”

“There _is_ no connection,” she insists too hastily, “Just a... a fluke. A magical deja-vu.”

“Ah, is that what it is?”

Her blouse is made of light blue layers of billowy fabric and leaves her back delightfully bare. He can’t help but think that from their first meeting on Solaria to this very moment, not once have they actually touched. Even during their earlier battle there had always been a layer of magic between them. And he wonders, _he wonders..._

“If you are right, then certainly this will not bother you.”

He lets the knuckles of his closed hand hover over her lower back, only an inch away from her skin. The hair on the back of her neck rises.

“What- “, she bristles, a panic in her voice she can’t quite disguise, “Stop that, what are you doing?”

His hand follows the curve of her spine, always keeping its distance, all the way up to her neck. The immobilizing spell holds true, but the beginnings of a shiver are there.

“Don't,” she says and it’s almost a whisper, _almost_ a plea. The sound is incredibly sweet to his ears.

His hand lingers, just for a moment before pulling away. She sighs in relief, but he does not plan to go this easy on her.

He feels that this moment might be important, like the first step on a newfound planet.

He wants to see her face when they touch.

“What's wrong, Bloom?”, he asks as he circles back in front of her. “Scared of another fluke? Another deja-vu?”

She bites her tongue, looking so nervous he almost takes pity on her. But she has made it a point to provoke him today, and he wants to satiate at least a little of his curiosity.

“It doesn’t matter,” she whispers more to herself, as if she can already tell what expects them. “It doesn’t.”

“Hmm...”

His hand is drawn to her cheek on its own accord. Her eyes flicker from it to his face and back.

“Only one way to find out,” he smiles ironically, but the way he holds her gaze is serious. “Princess Bloom of Domino.”

He brushes a finger over her cheek.

There are no flames flickering to life, no explosions shaking the ground. The Great Dragon does not rear his head from millennia of sleep to chide him for tormenting his heiress. Instead the world seems to fill with quiet. A cacophony of noise that has accumulated for centuries in the back of his head falls silent; a restlessness he hadn’t even realized calms beneath the warmth of her skin.

He pulls his hand back as if she had burned him, but the feeling does not disappear. It is as if every fiber of his being, every molecule in the universe has waited for them to touch with baited breath, and the tension that has built now dissolved like a sigh.

Bloom's eyes are wide, and if possible she is even more motionless than before. He doesn’t know what she feels - it can’t be as powerful as for him, she's only existed for such a short time, after all - but it must be strong, because for once she is completely silent.

He takes a breath and is surprised at how easy it feels. As if his chest had grown tighter and tighter over the years, and only now relaxes to let him breathe. He is torn about how to feel. It doesn’t sit right with him that she has been the key to such fundamental change, that she can hold this much power over him. On the other hand the feeling is _exhilarating_ , unlike any thrill he'd ever experienced, and how could he resent her when she had given him _this_?

Without another moment of hesitation he returns his hand to her face, tracing a curve from her cheek to her temple. He could swear he feels the way her magic courses through her body and there's a faint tingle where they touch, but no new burst of euphoria, and still no Dragon rising from the grave. Just her warm, soft skin.

“What a truly miraculous fluke.”, he marvels, and the sarcasm of his words doesn’t reach his voice. The sound seems to shake her out of her stupor.

“I...”, she starts with a voice so breathy he can barely hear her. “I didn’t...”

There are many ways she might want to finish that sentence. ' _I didn’t feel anything'_ would be an obvious and frankly offensive lie; ' _I didn’t expect this'_ would be true but an understatement. Since he doubts she wants to say _'I didn’t know any better, I am sorry for doubting you'_ , followed by an abrupt change of loyalties, he decides he doesn’t want her to finish the sentence at all.

Instead he walks, once again, around her. His hand brushes over her collarbone, her shoulder, her neck, following the traces of magic that run through her like veins. During his long life he's seen many diagrams of the paths of magic that cover every creature with some kind of power, be it beast or witch or fairy. But he's never felt them like this, never been aware of another being's power as he is of Bloom’s. It’s not like a map of veins, nothing so cold and mathematical, more like a sense of warmth.

“Did you know,” he says as he runs his hand over the mark on her shoulder where a spelled dart had hit her, “that there used to be witchers that stole fairy wings?”

Bloom tenses in surprise at the change of topic, and maybe in fear as well.

“The practice is rather barbaric, and I consider myself a civilized evil. But the concept has merit.”

He lowers his eyes to a point slightly below her shoulder blades. To the naked eye there is no difference to the rest of her creamy skin, nothing to indicate a weak point.

“A fairy's wings are manifestations of their magic, and the point at which they connect to the body serves as a nexus. It is both a focal point of power... and a weakness.”

He remembers watching her fall on Andros, after taking a single, well-aimed hit to the back. She seems to remember as well, because she makes an angry little sound when his hand ghosts over the spot.

“Not only in battle,” he adds and runs a finger over the nexus, just once. She sucks in a sharp breath as if she'd been struck, but it doesn’t sound as if she is in pain - much the opposite. He smiles.

“Surprised?”

He's not sure why he tells her all that. It’s possible he merely wants to lord his knowledge over her, to intimidate her after his temporary lack of control. But he suspects it might be because of Faragonda as well. The old fairy is Bloom's main source of information in this world, and he feels like he can spite her by offering her student knowledge - and doing so freely. As if every bit of information Bloom takes from him is a part of her mind to call his own.

Or maybe he simply wants to provide context to the sensation that he knows to be... _exciting_.

“I want you to know,” he speaks on, tracing the red mark of a dart on her back, “that I don’t have to be cruel, Bloom.”

He brushes over her skin again and her hands twitch with the unfamiliar feeling. She swallows, muscles in her neck tensing at his touch.

“I can be pleasant.”, he says softly.

Slowly he leans forward and presses a long, unhurried kiss to her back. A strangled sound leaves her lips, something between a hiss and a gasp. He smiles into her skin. Her hands clench to fists, a first sign that the immobilizing spell begins to wear off.

A shame. Just when he began to enjoy her company outside of combat.

He pulls back and steps around her so he can look at her.

“Which is why you should reconsider,” he continues, his eyes darkening, “whether you truly want to antagonize me. You'll find I am far less pleasant when provoked.”

Her lips look like she worried them with her teeth only a moment prior, but they quickly turn into a scowl.

“Only one way to find out,” she quotes his own words back at him, “Valtor of Nowhere.”

He feels like he should kiss her again, just for that delightful insolence of hers. Instead he settles for a mocking bow and takes flight, escaping Callisto's palace through the very hole they had blasted through it earlier.

There's humor to that, he thinks and admits to himself that he was wrong. There is no way he will tire of Bloom any time soon.

-

The portal hall they made into their base is silent. It is a place between worlds, no longer in the Omega dimension, not quite yet on Andros. It is the perfect place to summon his new spells without interruption - the Trix are still out to torment the locals.

Valtor waves his hand and a circular, silver field appears mid-air, a window through space. The Eye of Callisto awaits his orders.

He could listen in on the council of Magix or learn the plans of the pitiful army of Andros. He could spy on Griffin or Faragonda, or the other remaining members of the Company of Light. Someone of strategic value to him.

Yet he feels like his first look into the universe should be to the fairy that attempted to prevent it. The Spear of the Hunt bends to his will, following memories of red hair and soft skin, of eyes that could burn him. It reaches halfway across the dimension to pierce the protective barrier around Alfea and when it finds its mark, the Eye flickers to life.

The Winx' dorm room is an explosion of colors against the cold blues of the portal hall. Surrounded by a frankly alarming amount of potted plants, the young fairies sit together and listen to Bloom's report.

“-shrieked and hollered like a banshee, for at least an hour!”, she groans. “If I never see Varanda again, it would be too early.”

“We have to show some empathy,” one of her friends comments. She tugs a dry leaf off of the closest plant and pats Bloom on the shoulder. “She's just lost her kingdoms most sacred spells. I would be upset too if someone stole Linphea's magic.”

The princess of Solaria only scoffs.

“There's upset, and then there's crazy, Flora. Besides, she only has herself to blame! Bloom warned her this would happen, and she brushed her off like it was nothing. And that after all the time I invested in a proper outfit for Bloom's trip! That shirt is hand-woven callistoan silk.”

“Let's look at the bright side,” the pigtailed fairy to her left chimes in. “If Varanda wouldn’t take us serious before, maybe she will now. She can still help us get the other systems to protect their magic better. Me and Techna managed to convince Zenith, after all, and you guys got the word to Linphea. If Varanda supports us, I'm sure the Council will finally agree to send more support to Andros.”

Apparently, all of them had been on some kind of diplomatic campaign to various planets. He has to chuckle at their blue-eyed optimism.

Callisto will never get involved in anything beyond their orbit, especially now that they are weakened. And to wait for the Council of Magix to change its mind, once it has reached a decision... Well. He hopes the fairies have mastered the virtue of patience.

“We could use all the help we can get,” Layla of Andros agrees, eyes clear and seeing, to his disappointment.

“Especially if Valtor continues at that pace. The Council has to move now, before it’s too late.”

It already is too late, but he can’t fault them for hoping.

“We shouldn't split up anymore,” Bloom says quietly. Her friend with the pink-dyed hair raises an eyebrow.

“We can’t reach enough people at the required pace if we go together, we've been over this. Only by being in several places simultaneously we can- “

“I know, I know. It's just...”

Bloom groans and pulls at her hair in a burst of frustration.

“This isn’t _working!_ We can spend the entire year coddling Princesses and begging for help at Magix, but in the end we're just six kids and they won’t _listen_ to us!”

She stands up and begins pacing the room.

“We've tried it the diplomatic way. We've said the right things, worn the right clothes, we've read Stella's manner manual. We split up and wear ourselves thin, and he still gets away with more spells! It's _useless!”_

“Then what do you want us to do?”, the princess of Andros counters, standing up as well. “Sit back and do nothing? Watch as he wreaks havoc on my kingdom, turns my people into monsters?!”

“I say we stop wasting our powers.”, Bloom says and looks at her friend. “We are the ones who defeated the Trix and destroyed Darkar, not the Council. And we did it together! By splitting up we are simply giving Valtor more openings, and by playing ambassadors we are missing in action when people need us.”

She stops her pacing and let’s herself fall onto a chair.

“We can’t count on the help of strangers. To them, this is just another problem on a far-away planet that has nothing to do with them. But _we_ , we can beat him.”

Her eyes are blazing, and not for the first time he wonders what she felt during their moment on Callisto.

“Let's go after Valtor ourselves.”, she proposes. “We can ask the Specialists for help! Forget about the Council of Magix, or any other council, or that horrible Princess Varanda. My Mom always says: if you want something done right, do it yourself!”

He is very confused for a few moments, as to how she could seek advice from the late Queen Marion, but the riddle is solved when Stella claps her hands.

“Far be it from us to question the great Vanessa!”, she cheers, and reminds him that Bloom grew up with foster parents, “I am with Bloom on this one.”

“You just say that because of the part with the Specialists”, another girl groans. “Seriously, don’t you and Brandon spend enough time together already?”

“Oh, shut up, Musa.”

“Bloom?”, the more quiet, brown-skinned Winx asks and immediately the rest of them settle down. “Did something... happen, during the fight?”

“Why do you ask?”, Bloom answers, looking genuinely surprised. The other girl sits down next to her.

“No reason. It's just that you seem... angry. More than before.”

Valtor smiles. He likes the idea of having a lingering effect on her, and even more he likes the corner the question puts her in.

“You know how I hate losing,” Bloom huffs and his smile widens, “and Valtor... said some things I didn’t like, and- “she shrugs, trying for nonchalance, “-he touched me.”

The room falls quiet and his good mood disappears. Anger rises in him so quickly he almost breaks the spell, hands clenching to fists. He expected her to lie, _wanted_ her to. Wanted to preserve the sacredness of that moment in silence, something of Bloom only he knew. And she- she just _mentioned_ it in passing to her five common roommates, as if it wasn’t intimate, as if they just shook hands and parted ways. How _dare_ she.

His anger, however great, pales in comparison to Stella's. The blonde fairy stands up and looms over Bloom, murder in her eyes.

“Bloom, darling,” she says in a voice that is eerily calm, and with a look that screams for violence, “if you tell me right now, that _that guy_ tried or did anything untoward to you. I swear to the Sun and the Moon, I will _kill_ him. I will end him with my own, bare hands.”

The rest of the Winx look absolutely frozen, safe for the tan one who gives a single, emphatic nod. Bloom blinks, then hurries to shake her head.

“No! God, Stella, that’s not what happened. But, er. Thank you. I appreciate it.”

The room sighs in relief and Solaria's murderous sunshine sits back down.

“Always, sweetie.”

Bloom rubs her shoulders and looks at her friends.

“There's just... something I don’t understand yet. I know that Valtor and I both draw our powers from the dragon fire, but... it's like I can feel him, sometimes. Like I know he is there before I can see him, and I think it's the same for him. When we touched, I...”

Valtor leans in, focusing the spell on her face. He is seething that she would disclose their connection so easily, but he can’t help but wonder what she felt.

“It _changed_ something, like the world got larger from one second to the next. I feel like I could transform right now and fly and never stop.”

She looks at her hands in her lap and flexes her fingers.

“I feel stronger, but not... not like there's more power, like... like I can see, _grasp_ more of it. A-and... it’s weird. And maybe it makes me a little hyped up for a fight.”

She gives her friend a shaky smile.

“Is it that obvious, Flora?”

The other girl smiles back.

“A little bit, maybe. But I'm glad that you feel... better. Or not worse, at least.”

Nodding in agreement, the fairy with the pink hair leans forward.

“Same here. But Bloom, you need to tell Faragonda about this. If anyone can tell you what’s going on, it’s her.”

Bloom gives a short nod.

“I've been meaning to talk to her ever since I got back. There's something else I need to ask her.”

After that, the fairies descend into inane chatter, occasionally interrupted by a small grey rabbit. Valtor dismisses the spell, not interested in lesson plans and rumors. He has much to think about.

For one, how beautifully her own view of their touch contradicts his. Where for him, the world seemed to finally fall silent, hers expanded and grew. And while it is true that his touch hadn’t been _improper_ , in the stricter sense, it was nonetheless intimate to have access to a focal point of her magic. Not to speak of the sensations it tends to invoke. But she was raised outside of the magical dimension and can't be blamed for not knowing. Besides, perhaps it was better she did not tell her furious friend that little detail.

His mood sours as he continues that thought.

She simply _told_ them everything. As if they have the right to know, as if they can _possibly_ understand the magnitude of their connection. A group of common, immature, barely trained fairies now know of something not even he fully understands. Something that was personal.

He closes his eyes and leans his head back, rubbing his temples. That is a problem for another day, another fight. Perhaps for the Trix, they always nag him to send them into battle. And they will encounter the Winx soon, he knows. He is almost glad they decided to seek him out. It may be troublesome, but it is also a chance.

For now, however, he has a goal and a plan to focus on. There are worlds to conquer, spells to obtain. A connection to study.

And a pretty, mysterious young enemy to learn simply _everything_ about.


	2. Polaris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another planet, another encounter. I promised you smut, and now I deliver.

Polaris, against popular expectations, is no world of eternal snow and ice. It merely has harsh winters, which are swiftly replaced by sweltering summers every year. There's no autumn or spring, at least none that last longer than a week. Polaris is the world of polarity, of tension between opposites and jarring, almost ridiculously abrupt change. It is also home to a set of considerably strong magics, all fit to the theme of course. Which is why Valtor, accompanied by the irritating but useful Trix, seeks to infiltrate its castle.

“Ugh, this is boring!”, Stormy groans and fries a security drone with lightning. “Are we sure it’s even worth it?”

“Scared of getting caught, Stormy?”, Darcy mocks her and moves the wreckage out of the way with a wave of her hand. “You want to crawl back home already? I would have thought you'd enjoy a little exercise.”

Icy keeps quiet and thus earns her place as his current favorite witch.

“Oh please,” the shortest of them snorts, “Nobody here appreciates a good fight like me. I just don’t want to waste my energy, you know? Bots are hardly worth our time.”

When no one bothers to reply, she floats to catch up with them.

“I mean, if _I_ had some super powerful spells lying around, I’d put them somewhere safe. Not set a few drones on top and be done with it. So, either the king of this absolutely tacky place is stupid, or his spells just aren’t as important as he says.”

“Rest assured,” Valtor says rather coldly, “that I would not bring you all the way out here if I wasn’t certain the spoils are worth our while.”

His words fulfill their purpose and shut her up. She can’t nag him as long as she spirals over having sounded like she doubted him. He has the feeling the witches might do a great deal to be the one in his good graces. So far, their competitiveness benefits him.

“Stormy has a point, though.”, Darcy comments after five more bots. “These are standard security measures, far below our pay grade. This might be a trap.”

Darcy, to her credit, is smarter than her sisters and equally observant. She reminds him of Griffin in her better days, and because he is a nostalgic at heart he humors her.

“Polaris is the planet of polarity - magnetic, electrical and thermal.”, he begins and tears a bot apart by its circuits. “It is also a planet of arrogant royals and sloppy historians. They want to believe themselves invincible, and forget rather quickly that they are not.”

He leads them through a shortcut he remembers from the last time he was here and stops in front of a grand, massive door. It is less grand and massive after he has blown it out of its hinges. Behind it lies an almost endless hallway of light blue crystal.

“These are the crystal catacombs of Polaris.”, he explains. Icy gives an interested hum and walks in, only to scream and jump back immediately after noticing the sleeping creatures at the end of the hallway.

“And these,” he introduces with a little more amusement than polite, “are the drakes of Polaris.”

Polar drakes hardly deserve their name. They may _look_ like dragons - huge creatures with shining silver scales and sharp teeth, four giant claws and a tail that whips hard enough to shatter bone - but they are pale imitators of their ancestor. No, the power of the Great Dragon has foregone his next of kin in favor of a plucky, redhead fairy.

“They're asleep,” Icy huffs while her sisters giggle over her girly scream. “Some guardians they are, huh?”

“They won’t be for long.”

He steps into the hallway, the light blue crystals lighting up as they recognize him as an intruder. The nearest drake twitches.

“Do not attack,” he instructs them and does not slow his pace. “The drakes are almost deaf and half blind, but they have other senses to rely on. They can feel magic, all but the most passive or native spells, while also being immune to curses and enchantments - including my mark. Their eyes are trained for motion rather than form, meaning camouflage spells are wasted against them.”

One of the drakes lifts its lids, revealing white, glowing eyes. The Trix grow nervous.

“Their most basic sense to fall back on is their heat vision.”, he talks on without minding the drakes rearing their snake-like heads. “It is as acute as it is... negotiable.”

He looks over his shoulder to Icy, who immediately straightens.

“Do you mind?”, he asks with a smile meant to flatter her. It doesn’t miss its mark. With far more flourish than she would have bothered with without him present, she summons a blizzard that cools everything in the room.

“Most witches or fairies would be unable to chill their body temperature to this degree.”, he carries on as the drake looks around in confusion, distracted by the spike in magic. “But most of them have not survived the omega dimension either.”

Icy's blizzard ebbs and the drakes rise to chase the wisps of magic in the air, oblivious to their presence now that all of them are cooled and none are using any spells.

“Cool,” grins Icy, the only one of the witches not shivering.

“A-a-and we gotta stay cold until we're o-o-o-out again?”, one of her sisters complains, but he has already turned away, his focus somewhere else. There is a hint of... something in the air, something that beckons him like a candle in a dark room.

“That way!”, a feminine voice calls faintly, and he doesn’t have to wonder anymore.

“Your favorite fairies have arrived,” he informs the Trix and they immediately stop their bickering.

“Damnit, they really are everywhere!”, Stormy growls and jumps up, cold forgotten. “What, are we gonna fight them or not?”

“Uh, hello?”, Darcy gestures at the drakes, who have stopped sniffing the air and now patrol the hallways with keen eyes. “Big, magic-sensing dragons right there? What do you wanna do, throw rocks at the Winx?”

Icy rolls her eyes.

“Idiots. This is an advantage!”

Her sisters look at her like she's lost her mind and Valtor steadily loses hope in their ability to function without a leader. Not that this isn’t exactly what makes them good allies.

“We'll bait them,” Icy spells it out for them. “Lead them right into the dragon's lair and let them dig their own graves with their flashy fairy magic. Once the drakes are done with them, we'll finish them off.” Her smile turns cruel. “What's left of them, anyway.”

He looks down the hallway, towards the promise of spells that would solve their little drake-problem. The choice is easy: play cat and mouse with a group of exhaustingly self-righteous fairies or leave the Trix to it while he goes to steal the spells.

“I won’t waste any more time on this planet than absolutely necessary,” he decides, before softening his tone and placing a hand on Icy's shoulder. “I see you have everything under control here.”

“Of course, Valtor!” she purrs, basking in his attention. “Leave this to me, don’t let the spells wait.”

“I‘ll collect you when I am done,” he tells the others, who look at their sister with a mix of disgust and jealousy. “With some powerful new magic for each of you, if you can keep the Winx busy for long enough.”

Darcy gives a mocking salute while Stormy grumbles about, but none object. He phases through a wall just when the first fairy enters the corridor.

The crystal catacombs are a maze of hallways. Around every corner lurks another one of the drakes, and he knows Icy's chill will wear off soon enough. He isn’t worried about his success - he has conquered these very halls only half a century ago, and he knows that as soon as he reaches the vault, the drakes won’t be a problem anymore. The spells inside are powerful enough to hide him from them without tipping of their magical alarms. 

It is a credit to the arrogance of the royal family that they still have not updated their security measures. As the hereditary owners of these spells, they can use them to simply walk through the drakes unnoticed while everyone else turns into their next meal. It is an efficient system, admittedly - the only ones who can enter are those that already possess the magic inside. Unless the one who enters is him, of course. He knows all the weak points in the safety measures of more planets than exist anymore. And he will breach each of them.

He rounds a corner, phases through a few more walls and reaches the hallway he was looking for. It’s more lavish than the others, alcoves and crystal sculptures lining the walls, so grand it feels like this single hallway wants to be a palace of its own. He scoffs and walks past the drakes patrolling it, until he reaches the heart of the catacombs: a great antechamber with an equally great door forged into the very walls. These are not the same doors he imploded all those decades ago, apparently someone had renovated. Less blood on the floor, too.

He turns back towards the drakes and gives a sharp whistle. They may be mostly deaf - but still only mostly. Their heads snap to him and he turns back to the door, raising his hand. His mark doesn’t take on most inanimate objects, but it still works quite well as a magical anchor. The glowing lines of his symbol etch into the metal, simmering with latent magic. It cannot break the doors of course. The drakes, however, can. Roaring they open their maws, electricity crackling between their rows of metallic teeth. He steps aside, and the boom of thunder that follows makes him smile.

The drakes, satisfied that the foreign magic is annihilated, return to their posts. Valtor, satisfied as well, returns to the vault. The round metal door is nothing more than a smoking pile of scraps now.

He steps through the debris, brushing dust off of his cloak. The vault hasn’t changed on the inside, crystal and more crystal, but some of its contents are new. History books that are deemed too dark for the public - he knows their contents firsthand and has no use for them. Sculptures, even larger than those in the hallway, and some so small he can barely see them. Some contain spells: he pockets one to reward Icy, and another one for her sisters to bicker over. Nothing to ignite their ambition like making them fight for their powers, after all. He can’t work with just one moderately competent witch.

He walks past rows and rows of gold and gems until he finds what he is looking for. A metallic shard, inconspicuous between all these treasures but far more valuable than them, rests upon a small pedestal. It is shaped like two elongated, triangular pyramids fused together at their bases, and is just large enough to fit comfortably into his palm. He closes his fist around it and _pulls_ , sucking out every tendril of magic that clings to the small containment crystal. He is familiar with these spells, has owned them once before, but the thrill of power singing through his veins is pleasant nonetheless.

Somewhere many miles above him, the mage king of Polaris feels his power fizzle out and faints into the arms of his elderly prime minister.

When the transition of magic is complete, the containment crystal crumbles to dust between his fingers and he stands up. Barely ten minutes have passed since he left the Trix to themselves and they can’t have messed up already, so he might…

The tension in the back of his mind returns, a restless call, a beckoning. He looks up and towards the entrance of the vault. _She is close._

A gleeful anticipation rises in his chest and he leaves the vault without another look. Icy's cold has long since worn off, but with a few chanted words a new spell washes over him that hides his heat signature well enough. The magic is native and so the drakes pay it no mind as he passes them, leaving the antechamber.

He hasn’t really expected the Trix to stop her. Delay her, yes, and maybe keep up the others, but not the dragon fire fairy. Somehow, he even hoped for her to seek him out once more. She is so very, very entertaining an enemy, and this connection between them fascinates the scholar in him.

He is halfway through the corridor when Bloom skids around the corner, red hair waving behind her like a living flame and a shining object in her hand. She is untransformed, wearing a cropped shirt and jeans that look slightly singed on one side. He has missed quite a lot in fashion development during his imprisonment, but he is fairly sure the giant tear on the other side of her jeans is not meant to be there. Her eyes find the wrecked door behind him, the unbothered dragons next to it, and finally him.

“Looking for someone?”, he asks with a smirk.

She doesn’t answer. Instead she launches herself forward with a battle cry and raises her hand, but instead of fire magic bursting from her palms he hears a shot and something fast zips past his head. It takes him several seconds to realize the shiny object in her hand is, in fact, a gun and yes, the most powerful fairy in the dimension is shooting at him with a Specialist's stunner. He would laugh at her, but she has used his moment of disbelief to cover a lot of ground and is - still - _shooting_ \- at him. So he dodges, takes a few steps back and saves a moment to push down the sheer delight that fills him at this ridiculous, _preposterous_ image. With a suppressed chuckle and a wave of his hand he summons a magnetic field that dissolves all projectiles upon impact. Her eyes widen in disbelief.

“You can use- “, she bristles, but the roar of a drake cuts her off. She has to throw herself to her right to avoid the teeth that would have snapped her in half. He’s been meaning to ask her what her solution to the heat vision problem was, from one intruder to another, but apparently her idea had simply been to run faster than the giant murder-lizards on her heels. It’s actually brilliant, now that he thinks about it. Because, while the drakes can see movements better than shapes, they are primarily trained to detect small motions. A burglar sneaking past, a ripple in a camouflage spell, a spying drone creeping over the floor. Not a bright red blur that is gone faster than it has appeared.

He doubts she knew all that before she decided to run, but he can compliment her for the results all the same. The object of his musings, meanwhile, has evaded the drake for long enough to break straight through his magnetic field. She raises the stunner, but in her single-minded focus to get him into her range she has forgotten that _she_ is now also in _his_. He grabs her wrist and sends the stunner skidding over the polished floors, another spell and the annoying thing explodes. He looks down on Bloom, now unarmed, and lifts an eyebrow.

She is so marvelously easy to provoke.

With a snarl she raises a fist above her head, apparently deciding death by drake is not as terrifying as the prospect of losing to him. But only a second after the first sparks of magic leave her hand, the drake that has been chasing her is joined by the ones guarding the vault, and enraged by her unfamiliar magic they open their crackling jaws. Valtor decides that today is not the day Bloom of Domino dies.

Three consecutive explosions shatter the crystal floor they had inhibited milliseconds before, stray lightning arching between the three beasts and pushing them apart. When the smoke settles, their targets are gone and they continue to scout for trouble. A small distance away, hidden in an alcove behind some kind of abstract crystal sculpture, Valtor holds a struggling fairy in his grasp.

He watches carefully as the drakes split up, before sighing and looking at his catch. Bloom's eyes are wide with a mix of anger and shock, but that doesn’t keep her from fighting against his hold. He has one arm trapping hers against her chest, his hand gripping her shoulder, while the other is circling her waist to keep her from kicking back against him. His skin prickles where it touches her, but that won’t help her. With her back pressed against his chest, she has little room to struggle, and magical prowess aside, she cannot _possibly_ hope to overpower him with physical strength. 

“I am impressed,” he tells her lowly, voice dripping with sarcasm. “To go after me on your own, with nothing but that pitiful little gadget... Did you chase after me from the beginning, or did you leave your friends to the Trix when the drakes appeared? They were quite bloodthirsty when I announced your arrival. The drakes as well, I suppose.”

She bares her teeth, pushing against his arm with all her strength - to no avail.

“I won’t,” she growls, “let you steal another planet's magic. You will pay for what you have done to Andros, to Domino.”

So she finally knows their history. He has to smile at Bloom's bravado - and her evasive reply.

“Threatening me, after I saved your life? How _rude_ of Faragonda's little model student.”

The hand gripping her shoulder loosens a little, running up and down the bruised skin. There’s a faint pink mark where the immobilizing dart on Callisto hit her, and he feels her wince when he brushes over it. He likes the sound, almost as much as her angry shouts.

“You were so much nicer the last time we saw each other.”, her provokes her, wallowing in memories of her gasp when he had touched her.

She stops moving for a second, before fighting anew.

“You won’t get away this time,” she hisses, “this time, I brought my friends. And you'll find we are everything but _'nice'_ when fighting together.”

He has seen them fight together and he disagrees, but that is beside the point. And said point is that the connection leading them to each other is buzzing wherever they touch, and the feeling only grows with her anger.

“Is that so?” he mocks. “Then why are you all alone down here, with me, while your dear friends fight dragons and witches without you?”

He can piece together what happened well enough. If this thread between them feels to her anything like it feels to him, she might have forgotten about her fellow Winx as soon as she set foot into the catacombs. Her impulsivity is going to be her downfall, but for now it is his pleasure.

“What if they get hurt, without you?”, he croons in false concern, grinning when she freezes, “Or worse? Stormy was so desperate for a fight, and you know how the Trix get. But with all those drakes around, perhaps they didn’t even need to fight?”

She is quiet for a moment, before looking up.

“Let me go,” she demands, clearly planning to ditch her plans of chasing him to save her friends, and he doesn’t need to see her face to know the fire burning in her eyes. A short distance away, the drakes raise their heads.

“Oh, it is far too late to feel guilty,” he laughs and tightens his hold, “especially when you have your own problems to solve, now.”

She notices the drakes a few seconds after him. They are close, far too close, and inspect the hallway in front of them with suspicious eyes. One of them seems to have caught a wisp of magic in the air, likely tied to Bloom's impending outburst. She looks startled, and more than a little fearful.

“I wouldn’t move, if I were you.”, he says in a voice that is both soft and smug. “Their eyes may look blind, but I assure you they are not.”

The fact that she tenses in his grip but doesn’t fight anymore, even though she is all but shaking with fury tells him she already knows.

“They'll move on, sooner or later,” she presses out between clenched teeth. “And once they do, I'll- “

The closest one turns its head sharply in their direction and she falls silent, causing him to chuckle. She doesn’t seem to know the drakes of Polaris a practically deaf, but _he_ knows what really drew their attention. And whether it’s the proximity of her dragon flame or simply the familiar scent of fire and magic that clings to her, it makes him feel generous enough to counter her mistake. She jolts at the feeling of him leaning into her.

“What are you- “, she hisses but cuts off, remembering their reptile company. He smiles and tightens his grip on her, pulling her back into him despite her silent protests. The feeling of raw, primordial power burns beneath his hands, beneath the soft, bare skin of her waist, and the far too alluring scent of smoke intensifies as he whispers Polaris' spells into her hair. She freezes in his arms, though he can’t tell if it is out of fear of being cursed - or in reaction to the rising siren song of their shared power. The way she shivers makes him suspect the latter and he smiles into her disheveled red locks.

Drawing on magic always fills him with a certain satisfaction, and yet he is not prepared. Not for the rush of sensation, of power that hits him. He had assumed to understand the extent of their effect on one another after Callisto, but the moment on the podium completely fades from his memory in the face of _this_. He feels intoxicated, the very fabric of his being alight with a sense of _sameness_ , of completeness. Bloom gasps, and the heady sound is so sweet to his ears he can’t help but close his eyes in rapture. It feels like dying, like being reborn. Like all life that ever existed in the universe starts and ends where they touch. When the brunt of the feeling passes he is left strangely content, yet _craving_ more.

He can feel goosebumps spread over her skin as his spell sinks into her, not actually lowering her body temperature as far as necessary, but hiding it from any onlooker. The drake in front of them shakes its head and looks away, sensing nothing out of the ordinary.

Bloom relaxes ever so slightly. He can’t see her face, but he can feel her breathing faster than before and that gives her away. She is as affected as he is.

“What- “she clears her throat, shaking her head in the attempt to rid herself of the lingering sensation, “what... did you do. What was that?”

He blinks lazily, savoring every little movement she makes against him. She doesn’t exactly tolerate his hold of her, but the lurking drakes beyond their little alcove are enough to keep her from trying to break free.

“A souvenir,” he replies, a rather smug grin tugging at his lips, “from the vaults of this very planet. As you might have guessed.”

It is not an answer to her actual question. He knows she's wondering about the nature of their shared experience just now rather than the spell he'd used to hide her. But for some reason he wants to rile her. And his answer does the trick.

“You mean you stole it!”, she growls, and he can’t help but smile at the sheer outrage coloring her voice, her _endearingly_ naive righteousness. It truly is a shame she hadn’t been old enough to witness the fall of Domino - and everything that lead to it. If she had been able to follow interplanetary politics two decades ago, she might not have been so quick to condemn him now. Then again, maybe her inherent, rose-colored fairy-morals would have made her defend _poor Polaris_ anyway.

“I was not the first to do so,” is all that he says, before abruptly deciding he doesn’t want to talk history with her. Instead he summons a small breeze to move her considerable amount of hair aside without having to release her, baring her neck to him.

“What is that supposed to mean?” she snaps at him, having regained some of her composure - only to lose it immediately when she feels his lips press against her throat. The connection between them positively _sings_ at the contact and he is eager to follow its will, inhaling Bloom's scent with an appreciative hum. Her skin is like velvet beneath his lips, and warm despite the cooling spell. Against the cold of the catacomb's air she feels burning hot, and he pulls her closer as if he could keep her warmth all for himself, sharing it not even with the atmosphere of this worthless planet.

“You should know better than to fight me,” he murmurs into her skin, smiling against her when he feels her swallow. “Especially in a place like this.”

He presses another kiss against her neck, slightly above the last one.

“All on your own.”

With the next kiss he can feel her heartbeat, pulsing so strongly he can almost hear it.

“Without your little friends to guard you.”

He brushes against her pulse again, watching as goosebumps spread once again. This time not from the chill or a spell, but from nothing but his breath ghosting over her skin. His eyes darken with satisfaction and he feels himself grow hard.

“They're not far away,” Bloom attempts to sound ominous. But her voice wavers and he knows she wouldn’t have told him if they were close enough to pose a threat. The element of surprise has been their only advantage as of late.

“Really,” he mocks, smile widening. To see the fierce, fiery guardian of the Dragon Flame falter beneath his touch whereas every threat and danger hadn’t been able to deter her, fills him with a dark, twisted pride. He leans down and kisses her again, less playful than before and with a feeling of greedy hunger burning through his veins. He knows she noticed the change when her arms, still trapped in his embrace, push against his hold in a startled fit of defensiveness. In return, he draws her flushed skin between his teeth and bites down, just hard enough to make her yelp. He kisses the ensuing bruise gently, affectionately, and revels in the shivers it sends through her form.

There are many things he wants, right now, including turning her around and devouring her mouth with the same intensity she displayed during battle. But even in his proximity-induced haze he knows she would flee the moment he released her arms. And though the idea of hunting her, chasing her down holds a considerable appeal, a fight with the drakes decidedly doesn't. Instead he settles for feasting on her throat until she is writhing in his arms; breath coming in quick, heavy pants that sound like music to him. He is sure she can feel the bulge against the curve of her rear, it only grows with how deliciously she moves against him. But when she realizes, her little gasp is what makes him shudder.

Only then he allows the hand circling her waist to drift lower, caressing the skin of her side, her abdomen, the soft, silky skin just above the waistband of her jeans...

She goes very still for a moment, before struggling against his grip anew.

“S-stop– “ she manages to get out, hissing when his teeth find their earlier mark again. “Don't- “

He sucks on the tender spot, since it seems to be a weak point of hers and is quickly turning into a favorite of his.

“Stop me, then,” he invites her, voice low and daring her to try. And while she doesn’t stop twisting in his arms - something he begins to like quite a lot - she doesn’t seem to be desperate enough to use magic and risk the drakes' ire. Instead she attempts, rather obviously, to distract him.

“Why- Why are you stealing all these spells?”, she rushes out, still breathing hard. He refrains from biting her again, even if the sound she made the last time makes the idea all too appealing.

“Magic is meant to be used,” he humors her, drawing circles into her skin she doesn’t recognize as spellwork. “Not to waste away in forgotten vaults. I am merely...” he leans into the curve of her neck, lips caressing the vibrant bruises he left, “...restoring them to their true purpose.”

The spell on his free hand completes and electricity begins to crackle beneath his skin. He smiles, placing it just above her waistband.

“Besides...”

The sensation - something between static charge and electric vibration - surprises her so much she actually cries out, not fast enough to stifle it.

“These spells are of far more use to you with me.”

She clenches her teeth in the stubborn attempt to prevent another sound to follow. He has other plans.

Drunk on her reaction to him he finally lets his charged hand dip beneath her waistband, drawing slow patterns into her skin and letting the electricity light up the ends of her nerves. She rewards him with a strangled gasp, leaning into his touch against her will.

“Don’t you agree?”, he whispers into her ear as he brushes over the damp fabric of her underwear. He crooks a finger and sends sparks through her skin, and the effect on her is immediate. She arches her back, head dropping back to fall on his shoulder and she moans. The sound goes right to his head - among other places - with how _pleading_ it is.

“Yes,” he says with triumph, dragging two fingers up and down her clothed folds. The fabric of her slip is _soaked_. “I think you do.”

She wants to protest, he just knows she does, so he pushes the cottony barrier aside and finally, really touches her. Her words lose themselves on her breath, turning into shallow gasps instead. He leans his face against her cheek and makes a soothing, humming sound. With her head still on his shoulder he can see her face, for once, and the sight makes his control waver. She looks _surreal_ , a deep blush on her cheeks and eyes glazed over, so lost in sensation she doesn’t notice or care how vulnerable this position makes her. He is both unable to look away and unable to stay still. So he whispers praises into her skin and presses long, open mouthed kisses along the line of her jaw, tasting her without breaking eye contact.

His hand meanwhile continues to send jolts of electricity through her as he explores the velvet skin of her cunt. She is dripping with arousal, coating his fingers with wetness as he circles her entrance in slow, steady motions. His thumb brushes over her clit and her eyes flutter closed, a breathy “Oh” escaping her lips. He is _addicted_ to her precious little sounds.

She clenches around him when he pushes his index finger in, as if to trap him inside, and he smirks into her neck at the thought. The feeling of fullness, his touch and the electric magic in her nervous system eats away at her restraint until she rocks into his hand, just once, before trying to stop. He doesn’t let her.

“Bloom,” he chides, voice almost playful, and her eyes snap open just as her carefully adds another finger. He pulls out until only the first knuckle remains, before slowly pushing back in. She is so tight, _so tight_ around him and he has to go slow, but she falls apart around him so beautifully.

“Yes”, he encourages her when she bucks her hips, “ _Yes_. That’s right.”

And he means it. Their connection, this thread between their powers is blazing with the feeling of rightness, of _more, yes_ and _closer_. Bloom's hand grips the arm trapping her like a lifeline, like she might drown without it. He quickens his pace, two fingers thrusting steadily into her while his palm cups her sex and guides her rocking hips. And if he guides her _just so_ to make her grind back against him, no one is going to fault him for not being entirely selfless.

A sound leaves her lips, and it’s so breathy he almost doesn’t realize it’s a word. He leans closer, waiting for her to repeat it. She bites her lip instead, and it takes a particularly deep thrust of his fingers to loosen her tongue.

“Please,” she gasps, _moans_ , and her voice echoes through the alcove. Somehow that single word succeeds where countless enemies have failed: it snaps his self-control clean in half.

“Bloom,” he calls - curses - and her name tastes of more power than any spell in the goddamn dimension. Almost without his intention, the polarity spell focuses into a singular point of energy. Its potency makes the hair on his neck rise.

“Come for me”, he commands, almost gently, and presses the heel of his palm against her clit to release the spell. Bloom _screams_ , magic tingling up and down her spine and through the most sensitive nerves in her body, and then the slick walls of her cunt begin to spasm around his fingers. He doesn’t wait for her: he pulls away, grabs her waist and turns her around to _shove_ her against the crystal sculpture in a single, fluid motion. She doesn’t have the time to even realize her arms are free before he is back on her.

With his hips between her thighs he pins her against the crystal before finally, _finally_ conquering her mouth, and oh, how it is _worth_ the wait. Her climax ripples through their connection and he grinds against her through their clothes, aching with want. Her mouth is hot beneath his, and she returns his kiss with abandon; melting into him even as she writhes in pleasure. Without hesitation she meets him halfway at every snap of his hips, so wonderfully lost to him. He moves one hand from her lower back to the back of her head, pushing her even closer. In this position, she grinds directly against the bulge of his cock and does so with enthusiasm. He wants to rip the clothes separating them apart, but to do so he would have to bring far too much space between them. Instead he pushes her up the wall to make the angle feel even better, and she moans when he hits a sensitive spot just so. He swallows her sounds greedily, _hungrily_ , and rocks hard against her cunt as she tangles her hands in his hair. Bloom rides out her climax against him, all inhibitions burned through. Absently he wonders why he was stupid enough to simply leave her on Callisto when he could have done this instead.

Slowly but surely exhaustion catches up with her and her movements slow, her fingers clenching sporadically around strands of his hair. He leaves his hand in her own hair, not wanting to give her the chance to turn away. But the hand at her lower back drifts, slowly, upwards to the spot he'd revealed to her on Callisto. She sighs when his hand slides beneath her shirt and he drags his fingertips over the heated patch of skin. Her little shivers gratify him far too deeply, in a primal way he is sure reverberates through their connection.

In the distance, explosions rattle the walls of the castle and a drake roars.

Valtor groans in frustration. Without hesitation he pulls Bloom's face back to him when she attempts to turn her head. He hasn’t had nearly enough of her and he is painfully hard, but the rational part of him recognizes their window of quiet is closing. Still, he won’t move just yet. During his very, very long life he has been many things: a monster, a murderer, possibly a megalomaniac. But above all, he is a _gentleman_.

Not halting his teasing of the nexus on her back, he slowly lessens the pressure of his weight against her until her feet lower themselves to the ground. The way she clings to him - like her legs can’t carry her, like she can’t stand without him - makes him tempted to ignore the approaching Winx fairies. He could camouflage their alcove with magic, just to take Bloom - properly, this time - against the crystal as her friends search for her in the hallway. But while he is not in the soundest state of mind, this close to his pretty little nemesis, he is coherent enough to know when not to take risks. He is carrying a collection of rather powerful magics and can’t afford to lose it in the inevitable battle.

A deep sigh escapes him when he eventually pulls back, cursing the Trix for not holding them up any longer and cursing the Winx for not _being_ held up anymore. Now he will have to leave without doing anything about his own arousal, but he recognizes that her pleasure has been more important, this time. He likes the fact that he conquered so much of her body, while she is left guessing. This day will change all their encounters in the future, no doubt, and he takes pleasure in the fact that she will be unable to ignore the attraction between them now.

With far more effort than should be necessary he loosens his hold of Bloom _(fiery, furious Bloom who had come so beautifully when he'd told her to)_ and steps back. She falls back against the crystal, breathing hard and eyes heavy. He can’t resist to tilt her chin up, to bask in the havoc he'd wreaked on her. Her hair is even messier than usual and her cheeks are flushed, her parted lips swollen. Her clothes, hardly in pristine condition before, are wrinkled where he'd pulled it out of his way, and there's a sheen of sweat on her skin. She looks _ravaged_.

His smug pride must show in his face, because she blinks and her gaze hardens.

“I- “, she starts, trying to muster up her infamous anger, “I didn’t- this doesn’t change anything.”

Her voice is hoarse, and there's a hint of panic as she comes back to herself, but it’s too late to go back now.

“Doesn’t it?”, he asks sweetly, all too pleased with his work. The consequences only just now begin to dawn on her, and he relishes in the knowledge that she will lie to her friends in mere moments. Loyal, true Bloom _(who had given in so well, who'd moaned into his mouth just seconds ago)_ will look her fellow fairies in the eye and tell them she hadn’t found him. She won't tell them how he had trapped her and teased her and made her _fall apart_ in his arms. She will lie to her most trusted friends, all for him, and isn’t that the sweetest gift she could have made him?

Because when he sees her again, he will know that these moments never made their way from her memory to her mouth. That there was a part of her mind that belonged solely to him now, irrevocably.

He smiles at her and steps back into the wall just as a burst of fire singes the crystal where his face had been. Because he is a gentleman before all else, and he won’t embarrass her by engaging her in a fight she is sure to lose.

Not this kind of fight, at least.


	3. Ohm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bloom lives in his head rent free, so he tries to get into hers.

Bloom does not disappoint.

He follows her near constantly through the Eye of Callisto, in the days after Polaris. She hid all bruises and marks beneath her collar during their return to Alfea, and could not look her friends in the eye when asked if she had found him. To her luck and his immense satisfaction, her friends are too preoccupied with their own problems to pay her much attention. The Trix and polar drakes did some excellent work in the catacombs: the Winx are drained, weakened, and of the Specialists that accompanied them several are injured. One of them still hasn’t regained consciousness by the time they part ways with the fairies and return to Red Fountain.

After watching their ship disappear, the Winx drag themselves to their dorm. While most of them fall face-first onto their beds, Bloom is cornered by one of her friends - Flora, he reminds himself.

“Are we going to talk about what happened back there?”, she says, voice gentle but stern.

“What do you mean?”, Bloom gives back, panic rising in her eyes. Flora sighs.

“Bloom, you can't run off on us like that! We are a team and we didn’t know what to expect on Polaris. You could have been hurt, or worse!”

She places a hand on Bloom's shoulder, who looks down at her feet.

“I know how important this is to you. Valtor has taken more from you than we could possibly understand, but we are here for you, Bloom. Don't... don’t shut us out.”

He thinks she might break there. For a moment he is sure she will tell her everything, betray him once more. But again she is full of surprises. She doesn’t raise her gaze, but her voice is steady when she speaks.

“I'm sorry. I really didn’t mean to make you worry.”

Now she does look up. Her face does not give away anything, but her eyes shine with honesty.

“It won’t happen again, Flora. I'll stick with you guys in the future, no matter what happens.”

Her friend smiles and gives her a short hug.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, thank you!”, the fairy he thinks is called Musa calls from across the room. “I was worried sick 'bout you! You'll make me go grey before my twenties at that rate.” Her roommate throws a pillow at her, but turns to Bloom as well.

“You are lucky you didn't find Valtor.”, the pink haired one says. “Who knows what could have happened?”

He smiles. What indeed?

“We won’t find out.”, Bloom says with conviction, “I'll stop chasing him, and I won’t go off on my own anymore. I promise.”

It’s a promise he won’t let her keep.

* * *

She does make finding her hard. He attacks three more planets and encounters not a single Winx fairy. Through the Eye he learns that Faragonda keeps them close since Polaris, first through detention and now through endless lessons and training. He thinks she might suspect something, even though Bloom healed all bruises off of her neck the same night they returned to Alfea. A shame to witness, but preferable to the headmistress putting one and one together.

How he resents the old woman. He'll have to get rid of her soon, for the sake of his own sanity. Impatience burns in him; everything seems to move too slowly. Andros doesn’t fall fast enough, spells aren’t stolen fast enough, his opponents don’t _move_ fast enough! He is bored and frustrated and _furious_ that no one even seems to try to stop him, his only true enemy locked behind walls he can’t overcome quiet yet. The lost heir to the throne of Domino and last guardian of the Dragon Flame is kept from him by homework and curfews, of all things. Faragonda seems to live to spite him. _Stars_ , he hates her.

And he hates how close she is to Bloom. Always keeping her in her reach, so _smug_ about having the Dragon Fire in her grasp once more. It is her who develops Bloom's powers and her who decides when to stop, it is her who teaches her about her history. She _controls_ Bloom on a level he thinks only he is entitled to.

Because what claim does Faragonda have on her? Her powers, while great, can’t compare to the raw might of the Dragon Flame, and despite being old even for fairy standards, she has hardly seen as much of the magical dimension as himself. He simply despises the fact that Bloom is bonded to so many other, lesser beings. She is to be his equal; his one, worthy opponent and that makes her _his_. Her dependence on others diminishes her. And he feels, he _knows_ that no one besides him could shape her into the adversary he desires.

Faragonda will ruin her for him, if given the chance. He has to cancel her influence out, and he has to do it soon. But until his powers have sufficiently grown, he cannot reach for Alfea.

* * *

He attacks Vialos and gains its secret scripts. He conquers the magics of Lux City, he sets the Trix lose on Avis' airborne castle. After each attack he lets the witches play with their new little spells and retreats to his rooms at the portal hall, summoning the Eye to spy on strategic targets - or much more often, to study Bloom. Most of the time she is with the Winx, forcing him to endure endless chatter about trends on Solaria or dress codes on Eraklyon, or other inane topics. The few times he sees her without them, she either studies or is being tutored by her headmistress, finally insisting on learning her planets legacy. And while he seethes at Faragonda's extenuated, glorified depiction of certain events, he still keeps track of Bloom's progress. It is preferable to the company of her friends, at least.

It is during one of these post-combat check-ups that something new happens. He's returned from an especially mundane excursion, this time to the Tower of Alistair. Now he owns a set of particularly distinguished potion spells, and the Trix are still busy terrorizing the near city - desperate to one-up each other, competing for his favor. Entertaining to watch on occasion, but now he has more important things to focus on.

It is nighttime at Magix and the Winx' dorm room is dark and quiet. Solaria's princess is snoring in her room, half a dozen pixies buried in the numerous pillows surrounding her. The other rooms are empty safe for Bloom. He doesn’t know where the other fairies have disappeared to, and he doesn’t bother to find out when he sees that Bloom is awake in her bed.

She is wearing a light pink sleeping shirt, hem ridden up to her midriff, and yellow shorts that do their name _great_ credit. Her hair is fanned out behind her and she is lying on her side, blanket forgotten at her feet. Blue eyes stare at the wall across the room, wide awake and aware despite the late hour. He wonders what keeps her up.

For a few minutes, she simply lies there, staring into the distance. Then, slowly, one hand moves to run over her exposed abdomen. Valtor's breath catches.

She draws slow circles into her skin, seemingly lost in thought, oblivious to how hungrily his gaze follows the movement. Her teeth dig into her lower lip. It's almost as if she is nervous to go further, but that does not stop her for long. Inch by inch her hand moves lower, lower, and disappears beneath her cotton shorts. Bloom breathes out with a shudder.

Valtor watches, transfixed, as her fingers move below the fabric. He can feel himself grow hard but does not look away from her, not for a moment. The thought of missing even the slightest movement is somehow unbearable.

His blood boils in his veins when she lifts her other hand to reach beneath her top, cupping one of her breasts with a barely audible sigh. He can see the small points of their hardening peaks through her shirt.

Her breathing quickens. The sound seems to echo in his ears.

She is moving slowly, carefully; exploring rather than chasing. Her thighs clamp down around her hand and a little moan is stifled between clenched teeth. Valtor leans forward, enraptured. For the first time it occurs to him that he may have been the only one to ever touch her this way, that he could be the extend of her experience. That her climax on Polaris could have been her first. The thought makes him burn with all kinds of emotions and now he can't help it anymore; he seals his rooms and undresses. With none of his usual precision he tosses his clothes aside, eyes glued to Bloom's face, and takes himself in hand. A part of him is furious: he does not usually stoop to this level. There are a million better ways to spend his valuable time, ways that would be beneficial to his goal. He knows desire of course, but it is a tool to control others first and foremost - a tool he will never allow to be directed against himself. Not something to indulge in when there are more important things to do, and _certainly_ nothing he would have to indulge in on his own.

But his anger slips away from him like smoke when Bloom sighs. Her eyes, shining with want, flutter closed and he is dying to know what is going on in her head. What does she think of, with her hand between her thighs?

Stars, he wants to ask her. Wants to cup her hands with his, guide her movements while she quivers in his arms. She would have to tell him every hidden desire of hers, he'd make sure of it.

His hand tightens around his cock and she turns onto her back, as if she were facing him. A shudder runs through her and he moans, remembering the way she had felt against him on Polaris. How he wishes the Eye would be able to transmit his voice, how he wants to _speak_ to her! To make her tell him what she imagines as she touches herself. To make her tell him _everything_.

The hand running up and down his shaft follows the pace of her own hand but remains a poor substitute. The real thing is two systems and millions of miles away, locked behind walls and charms and barriers. He groans in frustration.

Bloom, all those miles away, spreads her legs a little and cants her hips. Her eyes are screwed together and more sounds escape her, breathy little things that make him twitch in his hand. Some might be words and he leans closer to the image in front of him, leaning against a pillar with one arm. But no matter how close, he can’t understand her. He snarls his resentment into the room. An overwhelming, furious desire burns through him, to know what she thinks, what makes her tick. He wants to _possess_ her, every part of her; own her on such a deep level she can never hope to escape him. Sink his teeth into her skin and claws into her mind.

She rocks against her hand and he curses, feeling his arousal seethe beneath his skin at the sight. Everything about her seems vibrant against the dullness of his rooms. Her disheveled red locks, her glistening eyes, the wanton mewls that leave her lips. There's a sheen of sweat covering every inch of skin he can see, and he is so enthralled he can almost taste the salt of it. Bloom's eyes flutter closed.

He is close, spreading drops of pre-cum along his cock with every stroke of his hand. But he is determined to see her break first, to outlast her as if this were some kind of childish competition. It feels like a way to regain control of himself, in a way.

But once again, she surprises him. As her movements grow frantic against her cunt, so close to the edge, she removes her other hand from her chest to... cup the side of her neck. The spot that had been marked with throbbing bruises only days ago, _his_ bruises, _his lips and teeth marring her skin-_

She comes. Her entire body tenses up as if immobilized, eyes screwed shut and lips parting for a moan. His self-control shatters only seconds after, spurred on by how she leans into the hand at her neck, how she is so obviously imagining, _remembering_ his kisses on Polaris. The desire that grips him is so _violent_ he cannot breathe for a few, delirious seconds. She looks radiant writhing in her sheets, lost to the entire world safe for him. He finds his breath again to groan her name, so sweet on his tongue he forgets she can’t hear him. For a moment the vision of the Eye is the present, here and now, and Bloom is just an arm’s reach away. But he reaches out and his hand phases right through the image of her. He holds his hand there, just for a moment, before the spell flickers out and he is alone in his rooms.

For quite some time, there is only the sound of his heavy breaths echoing around him. The satisfaction of his climax is soured by fact that the object of his desire is half a dimension away, and a restlessness takes its place soon enough. He needs to find her. Corner her somewhere she cannot run, cannot hide from him, somewhere no one can keep her from him. Where he can confront her with her very own desires and make her _scream_ , the way she hadn’t allowed herself to in her dorm. He wants to mark her in a way she can neither heal nor hide, to control her so utterly she can’t exist outside of him. It seems only fair, given how much power she had over him just now.

Hundreds of spells filter through his mind, one more useless than the other. His mark only works on the weak-willed and those who ask for it, and most other possession spells render the subject useless. He doesn’t want to puppet her, though the idea offers a vindictive satisfaction. He wants her mind intact so he can _break_ it, little by little, reshape it as he sees fit. Whether to turn her or to destroy her, he doesn’t know. Only that he needs to be able to _reach_ her.

With a snarl he waves his hand and the mess he made disappears. He has a map of the dimension memorized, stars and planets and moons lighting up in his head. He'd once conquered so many of them, but there has to be... yes. There.

A small world, a forgotten world. Peaceful and moderate and _useless_ \- almost twenty years ago, at least. Ohm is no kingdom, no state, not even a city. It’s barely more than a monastery surrounded by mild-mannered fools and cowards. The little magic it holds is of no use in combat, but now, _now_...

He gets dressed and storms out of his rooms, headed for the portal. In the physical world Bloom may be beyond his reach, but the depths of her sharp, colorful mind are an entirely different matter. There he will find her. And from the looks of it, he already holds quite the influence over her, there.

In a flash of light he travels between planets, materializing on Ohm out of thin air. Citizens gasp and shout at his arrival but he pays them no mind. Eyes set on the temple in the distance, he starts his conquest of Ohm.

-

Obtaining the teachings of the Temple of Enlightenment was far too easy. Mastering them, to his surprise, is not. Psychic magic has always been Griffin's forte and he scoffed at it more than once. What use are meditation and astral travel when he had easier ways at his disposal, ways that actually affect the physical world? That is not to say he doesn’t value the entire discipline. Mind games can be far more effective than any battle, and he has developed a taste for mirages and manipulation. But the more passive spells have never been worth his attention, and so his experience with them is limited. It takes him almost two days and some surprisingly insightful discussions with Darcy to fully control the magic of Ohm. In return he gifts her with a spell that can conjure the target's greatest fears to life. It serves a double purpose: reward her for being useful and get her and her jealous sisters out of his way. The Trix are out to try it faster than he can order them to, and he can be sure they won’t return for quite some time. A blessing, given that his new spells require focus and their constant bickering is _detrimental_ , to say the least.

He sits down in front of the portal, cross-legged. The humming energy of the gateway serves as an enhancer, and his own innate dragon fire as his link to Bloom. Magic rises in him, answering his call as easily as breathing. The universe fans out in front of him, dots of light and fields of darkness drawing him in. With a roar the burning, black-hot power of his darkened spark reaches out. The echo is immediate: somewhere in the distance yet not so far at all, the heat of the Dragon Flame flares up in reply. Two magnets, caught in an eternal dance of push and pull.

He barely has to do anything to follow its call, their power draws them together of its own accord. He can feel systems, planets rush past, can feel Magix in the distance as he follows the thread to its source. He pierces Alfea's barrier as if it were but air, and suddenly the world blurs around him and he has her.

Even when there is only a haze of shapes and colors around him, he knows he is in Bloom’s mind. The feeling of her and her powers is unmistakable. What surprises him are the traces of darkness that run through her mindscape like veins through white marble. It feels like scar tissue to his senses, an infection that has long since healed over but is not quite forgotten. How _curious_.

The next thing he realizes is the fact that the hazy vision around him might not be inherent to her mind. The truth is much simpler.

Bloom is dreaming.

All around him the scenery is shifting and changing, green forests one moment and a small city the next. Memories fall together to build her dreams, only to break apart and reorder themselves as her subconscious sees fit. He sees people fade in an out, floating through her thoughts like doves through Solaria's aviary. But there is method to this seemingly random change, a source. He follows the stream of memories until he finds himself in the gardens of Alfea - or rather, her memories of it. The mindscape is less fickle here, and the reason for it lies in its center. Bloom, bright-eyed and smiling, stands surrounded by Winx and Specialists to enjoy the sun. One of them says something and she laughs without a care in the world.

He has to chuckle. The scene is so... _cliché_. Picturesque and pretty, exactly what he should have expected of Faragonda's precious protégée. He doesn’t know why he is surprised the guardian of the Dragon Flame doesn’t dream of greater things. Her ambitions begin and end with defeating him. A pity, truly. To see such _exceptional_ potential wasted...

She is unaware of his presence, her back turned to him. Her dream-self has wings despite her lack of transformation, and they flutter with excitement as the blond Specialist next to her tells a story. Valtor takes the chance to note who is important enough to her to dream of. The Winx fairies, of course, and the team of Red Fountain students that accompanied them to Polaris. One of them looks familiar, the rest he has never seen before. That is unsurprising: those who enroll in Saladin's little fortress hold little to no magic and are therefore of no interest to him.

Bloom apparently thinks differently. She smiles when the blond one reaches out and takes her hand, leaning into her with far more familiarity than can be described as friendly. Suddenly Valtor remembers how he knows his face. It is almost an exact copy of Erendor of Eraklyon's, during his better years admittedly. The two-faced coward has a son, he recalls, and apparently no shame. To allow his heir so close to the last surviving child of Domino, the child of his closest friends no less, after he betrayed them so horribly... even to Valtor it feels a tad distasteful. He himself is hardly better of course, but he does not exactly _hide_ his nature either.

When Bloom leans her head on the eraklyan's shoulder, his morbid amusement transforms into a palpable disdain. _This_ is who she is interested in? He doesn’t know why, but he expected her to have better taste. Erendor's son is so... bland. Not committed to his title like the solarian princess, not defiant towards his customs like the princess of Andros. Not even self-preserving or pragmatic like his father. Amongst all of the royals Bloom has surrounded herself with, he is by far the least impressive: a decorative but underwhelming doormat.

Oblivious to his silent judgement, she smiles up at the prince and Valtor decides he has played spectator for long enough. He steps forward and his magic washes over the garden around him, sending ripples through her happy little dreamscape.

Her head whips around and without her attention, the image of her friends begin to dissipate like fog. Fiery blue eyes find him with an unexpected and somehow _gratifying_ precision. He wonders how aware she is, in this dreamlike state. If she can tell he is truly here, or if she presumes him to be another figment of her imagination.

For a moment, they simply look at each other, face to face for the first time since Polaris. Then something dark washes over the landscape of her mind, and it takes him a moment to realize it is not _his_ doing. Bloom's eyes sparkle with something passionate, vengeful; something that makes his hair stand on end in both caution and anticipation. The Eraklyon whelp's form has begun to blur in the few seconds she paid no attention to it, but it comes back into sharp focus as she grips his arm. The rest of her friends have disappeared into thin air.

A sense of foreboding rises in him, just before she turns away from him with one last, challenging look and presses her lips to the Specialist's. She isn’t shy about it either, burying her hands in golden hair and pressing herself against him without hesitation, without restraint.

She is trying to provoke him, he knows. She is trying to infuriate him, disregarding him to offend him, and it is working _wonderfully_. Wrath, sharp and ugly, churns in his chest and his hands raise to cast a spell, but this is her mind and his options are limited. He snarls her name in warning and can _feel_ her satisfaction; it echoes through this entire mental plain with outrageous clarity. His fury transports him closer to her, space just a vague concept in the abstraction of her dreams.

“Stop,” he commands her lowly, teeth bared, “if you know what's good for you.”

Bloom gives him a smug glare over the princeling's shoulder and only pulls him closer. He itches to tear them apart, to make her bleed for her insolence, but he will not sink so low. His fury crashes into her dreamscape instead: it darkens the skies and creates winds that pull at her, tear at her like dragon claws.

He remembers that weeks ago, the Trix had told him that the Winx were romantically involved with a team of Specialists. Their relationships hadn’t interested him beyond their potential as hostages, and he didn’t inquire about Bloom. It wasn’t important, then.

It was, now.

How dare she, _how dare she_ want anything less than him. This isn’t jealousy he feels, nothing so immature; what she is doing is _blasphemous_. His own desire for her aside, he is on the verge of a conquest that will span dimensions. He has blinded and ruined her friends, he has turned Andros into a ticking time bomb, he has taken _everything_ from her! Her parents, her planet, her people; everything she lost was his doing in one way or another. How can she waste even a single thought on anyone besides him, how can she desire anything except his defeat. He should be everything to her: her reason to wake up in the morning, the reason for every one of her movements, for every single beat of her heart! She should hate him so much that she _needs_ him, like water, like _oxygen_.

She should _burn_ for him. Instead she dreams of sunlight and blond little Princes.

“How precious,” he seethes, “that you would have the time for such juvenile romance while I conquer planet after planet. Unhindered by their pitiful little defenses.”

Her eyes shut themselves tighter for a moment, but she does not turn to look at him. The dreamed-up image of her Prince runs his hands over the bare skin of her lower back.

“Did Faragonda even tell you, I wonder?”, he taunts, fury distorting his voice into a snarl. “Of all the worlds that I destroyed while you stood by like a good little lapdog? Of all the cities that burned while you played with princes and fairies?”

The boy's form blurs around the edges, just for a second, but still she doesn’t answer him. Instead she spreads her wings and allows the eraklyan to slide his hand beneath her shirt, to reach for the nexus Valtor had shown her on Callisto. His blood _boils_ with rage.

“Or maybe you were happy to let them fall,” he hisses with narrowed eyes. He imagines how Erendor would wail and curse at him if he happened to mutilate his heir. “Maybe you would gladly sacrifice all those far-away planets, as long as you didn’t have to face their conqueror again.”

Fear, he knows, is power over her as well. Not as strong as her hatred, but power nonetheless. In front of him, Bloom's wings twitch.

“Are you scared, Princess of Domino?” He senses a weakness, blood in the water. “Oh no, did I _frighten_ the brave fairy of the Dragon Flame?”

When he smirks, it lacks all of his usual irony. It’s more of a baring of teeth than a smile.

“Don’t tell me you have been _hiding_ from me, ever since our little encounter on Polaris?”

His words finally have an effect on her, though it is not one he expected. She doesn’t turn to him, doesn’t rage at him, doesn’t even indicate that she heard him. But the shape of the Prince of Eraklyon wavers at the mention of Polaris, _ripples_ , and just for a moment, the hair she buries her hands in is no longer golden. Just for a moment it is too long, too pale, to belong to her image of the boy.

The moment passes, so short Valtor almost missed it. But he didn’t, and his fury ebbs to something more bearable as he realizes the truth.

“Unless,” he smirks and this time it truly is more of a smile, “Unless it's not me you fear.”

She stiffens, solidifying his suspicion.

“Poor little Bloom,” he ponders, voice teasing once more, “are you scared of yourself? Of how _easily_ you gave in to me, in the catacombs?”

The specialist shifts more clearly now, too tall for a moment and blurry the next. His uniform resembles a dark red coat for a second. Valtor hums and runs his fingers through her hair, eroding her focus.

“Or do you worry I might tell your friends what truly happened.”

The image she clings to is flickering like a bad transmission by now, and it soothes his wounded pride a little. He leans in over her shoulder, closer to her ear.

“You wouldn’t be able to lie to them then, would you?”, he says softly, though not without malice. “Then again, you surprised me the last time. When you promised your friends to stay by their side, after you were writhing against me only hours before.”

What remains of the simulacrum bears no resemblance to the Prince anymore. It is out of focus and wavering like a mirage of hot air, and what is still visible of it wears Valtor's colors.

“Or when you touched yourself,” he says, the malice in his tone accompanied by _something_ else, “and thought of my lips on your neck.”

He runs his fingers over the spot, entertaining the idea of closing his hands around her throat.

“I wonder... does your cherished Prince know about the marks I left? Of how beautifully you came,” he whispers to her, desire corrupting his latent fury, “with my fingers in your cunt?”

The flickering image is blown out like the flame of a candle, finally, permanently. Bloom opens her eyes and turns.

“They wouldn’t believe you,” she says, giving no indication that she just passionately kissed someone. In her voice is not a hint of fear. “If it is your word against mine.”

His smile widens. This Bloom, this dreaming, innermost version of her is not the same fairy she presents to the outside world. He remembers the scars of darkness marring her soul and wonders what else she is hiding.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” he replies, “And you can be relieved to know that I don’t plan to change it.”

He brushes her bangs behind her ear, the gesture possessive rather than caring.

“I like your secrecy. You lie so easily for me, so _reliably_. A rare quality, and one I appreciate.”

Her eyes burn into him and she does not back away. Without his arms or a spell to bind her, she stands her ground. Her boldness both pleases and infuriates him.

“You know nothing about me.” she dismisses his words with far more confidence than she can afford.

“Except for all the things you don’t want me to know,” he gives back. “All the things no one else has seen. Not your trusted friends, not even the boy you _adore_ so much.”

She scoffs and tilts her head to the side, assessing him.

“How do you know he hasn’t?”

He knows his face must have darkened, because a grim, cocky smile tugs at the corners of her mouth.

“Does that bother you? Could Valtor, the greatest wizard of all, be jealous?”

She has no sense of self-preservation. It's the only explanation why she would be so hell-bent to rile him today.

“Jealous,” he laughs, _incensed_ , because does she really think him to be so _crude_?

Her mindscape cannot contain the sheer fury he bleeds into it. Black clouds roll overhead and send lightning through the garden as he pins Bloom's shoulders against a tree with a shove.

“About _what?_ The silly crush of a naive little fairy? A boy who could not _comprehend_ real power unless it actively killed him? And how easily that could be arranged!”

She doesn’t bow to his threats, despite the fact that he is gripping her with enough pressure to make the tree behind her groan.

“The fact that I _love_ Sky. That I'm not mindlessly addicted to power like you are, that I dare to have a happy life without fearing you at every turn!”

“Your life _belongs_ to me!”, he snarls, and there is no more space for subtle manipulation. She has pushed too far and now she will bear the consequences. “Your pain, your pleasure, your darkest fears and desires are mine to withhold or fulfill. You may think you could be happy like this, but I can take it all away in a heartbeat.”

Her wings are pressed flat against the bark and she grunts in pain, but does not lose the smug look in her eyes. Her arms push back against him and he only presses on harder, even in his wrath never close enough to her.

“You will never know what to expect,” he growls through clenched teeth, “and no matter how hard you may try, you will never be able to hide. I will always find you, and make you regret even _thinking_ you could live in peace while I exist.”

She scoffs up at him and he wants to kiss her, he wants to kill her.

“Your very life is mine, and so is its end. No armies, not the Trix, _no one_ who will try to kill you will succeed, because only I could ever be powerful enough to defeat you. So _find me!_ ”

He laughs with more cruelty than he ever showed her, grabbing her wrists and pinning them over her head. He wants her furious, as furious as him.

“Find me and _fight_ me, while you still have the chance.”

“And what if I don’t?”, she laughs back, drunk on her perceived power over him. “What if I prefer to stay here, to ‘play with princes and fairies’ and decide to show Sky all the things you _think_ only you know?”

She cranes her neck forward to look up at him, eyes blazing with a smug challenge. “What if it’s him I think of at night, and he who touches me! Will you come to hunt me down? To kill me?”

He snarls and closes a hand around her neck, but it doesn’t frighten her. No, instead she shoots forward and smashes her mouth into his, teeth pulling at his lip with none of her usual qualms. He pushes back with just as much hunger and enough force to shove her head against the tree behind her. This infuriating, unrelenting creature beneath him has him brimming with something that’s too violent to be desire and too addictive to be hatred.

“I just might.”, he hisses against her lips and bites down, swallowing her moan. His lips on hers are punishing, brutal, yet instead of recoiling she leans into him and meets his intensity at every turn. At some point he pressed his thigh between her legs and now she is grinding against him, so _selfish_ in her passion. He retaliates by shoving her up the tree so that she is on eye-level with him and increasing the pressure on her throat, until she has to break away from him for air. He takes it as a victory.

“Somehow,” she rasps, giving him a hot look, “I doubt that.” Her voice is hoarse, yet she is grinning when his face darkens. “I think you'd be incredibly bored without me.”

She is right. But if she thinks he doesn’t have many, many other ways to be cruel, that is a gross oversight on her part.

“You have made a grave mistake today,” he says, and it's a warning, a _promise_. “One that will cost you dearly.”

She gives him a smile that is so sweet he has to taste it.

“You know where I am,” she taunts him when he pulls back. Under any other circumstances, he would applaud her. Just as he tried to bait her into seeking him out, she wants to lure him to Alfea, where she has the advantage. But right now he is far too angry to appreciate how quickly she learns. He laughs bitterly.

“Oh, _sweet_ _little Bloom_ ,” he chuckles and the self-assured look in her eyes wavers. “It won’t be you who I'll hurt. Not at first, at least.”

He intertwines his hand in her hair and notes how much he has grown to like it. So unruly, yet so soft between his fingers. His hand clenches into a fist around it, making her wince.

“You waste your affections on _so many_ people,” he muses and imagines a painful end for each of them, “All of them so weak. So frail. So far away from the safety of Alfea.”

There is worry in her eyes now, though she is quick to hide it.

“I was content to keep this between the two of us,” he clicks his tongue in exaggerated regret, “but if you insist on expanding our battlefield, I won’t deny you. And I will not save you the collateral damage, either.”

He pulls her head back so he can look at her, revel in her defiance - and her fear.

“The next time we see each other, you'll find provoking me was a very, very poor choice of yours.”

“You won’t harm any of them,” she glowers, “I won’t let you.”

“Oh yes, you will try. And you will fight to the last spark of magic, I am sure.”

He caresses her chin with his thumb, a mocking imitation of affection.

“It will make your pain so much _sweeter_ when you realize how helpless you were to stop me.”

The wind picks up again and the garden rumbles, fragments dissolving into thin air. Bloom is waking up.

“They're stronger than you think.”, she says, fear pulling her to consciousness, “And we are never alone. You underestimate our bonds to each other.”

He watches her lips curve around every word, drinking in every twitch of her throat as she swallows. It will be some time before he'll have the chance be so close to her again - and when he does, he'll make sure she will be entirely at his mercy.

“So confident,” he shakes his head, tightening his grip on her hair and burning with anticipation. “We'll see how confident you are after I _break_ your friends, one by one. The next time we see each other, Bloom,” he runs his thumb over her lower lip. “You will be all alone.”

The dream crumbles around them, but he hardly notices. His eyes are entirely on the rising fear in Bloom's eyes as he leans closer.

“And you will know it was all - your - fault.”

With a battle cry she tears away from him and the dream shatters. He is thrown back into his own body so violently he crashes against the wall behind him, hands crackling with unreleased fury. A shout tears free from his throat and he releases the built-up magic. Within a radius of twelve feet, all pillars explode in a rain of ice and stone. Almost immediately he summons the Eye, still panting from the intensity of his rage. He has to- he _needs_ to see that Bloom is as unsettled as him, that this ridiculous experiment wasn’t _entirely_ useless.

In her bed, his enemy jolts up with a gasp and curls her arms around herself, as if to make sure she is real. Her roommate wakes up almost immediately and turns to her, rubbing sleepy eyes to wakefulness.

“Bloom...? Hey, what’s wrong?”

The princess of Domino startles and looks up at her.

“I... I don’t know, I-I thought... We were together, but then there was...”

Her roommate sits up and if he were to take his eyes off of Bloom, he'd recognize her as Flora.

“Did you have a nightmare?”

Bloom shakes her head, pulling tangled strands of her hair out of her face.

“I'm not sure, I... it felt so real. Valtor was there, and I- “

Her mouth snaps shut and even in the dark, he sees her cheeks flush. The contrast between her in the waking world and her in her own mind is... jarring. _Intriguing_. He focuses on his curiosity and wills his anger to subside.

“It's okay, Bloom,” her friend attempts to soothe her, “you're safe, in Alfea. We're all here, and we won’t let anything happen to you.”

“But you- you!”, she struggles, torn between the remnants of her dream and reality. “I have to protect you! He said...”

Flora gets up and walks over, patting Bloom's back.

“It was just a bad dream, honey. We're okay! It wasn’t real.”

She looks doubtful but eventually, her breathing calms.

“A dream,” she echoes, rubbing her temples. “You're right. Of course, just a dream.”

Sighing, she turns to her friend.

“Sorry for waking you up, Flora. I don’t know what’s gotten into me just now.”

Valtor steps back as the girls reassure each other, ignorant to the reality of the situation. Let her enjoy this false sense of safety, let her lower her guard. Hundreds of spells come to his mind, curses and the cruelest enchantments. The flower fairy would make a good target, with how present she is in Bloom's life whenever he wants her on her own. Stella of Solaria seems closest to her, however, and her Father will be useless to him after the countess is crowned queen. How _tragic_ if an accident were to befall him, and her mother, and many others of her royal family. But not tragic enough.

He scoffs and turns away from the Eye, trying to regain his composure. He is _sloppy_ in his fury, imprecise, and that won't do. No matter the nerve of her, patience is of utmost importance now. And deep down, he already knows who he really wants to take his anger out on. Someone that could hurt her far deeper than any of her friends.

Bloom had mistaken his interest in her as power over him, and she will bleed for that fatal error. Her potential as his equal does not make her _safer_ , if anything she has far more to fear than anyone else. And he will hit her where it hurts, where it _cripples_ her; where she will despair with regret.

He recites the incantation for the Spear of the Hunt, as calmly as he can manage. The image of Bloom disappears as he redirects his focus, sending the Spear just a few miles further east. Red Fountain floats above the ruins of its former self, a poetic picture he silently congratulates Saladin for. As tiresome of an opponent the old mage was, he'd always had a taste for symbolism to rival his own.

A shame he hadn’t worked harder to pass on personality to his students: the pride of the school is a team of well-trained, hardworking _headaches_. They are still awake and exchanging quips that _he thinks_ are supposed to be witty. Under any other circumstances, he would never waste a second on Specialists. While bothersome when appearing in large numbers, they are but children with expensive toys in the end. And stars, their _intellectuality_ makes him miss the chatter of the Winx.

Resigned, he begins to follow their conversation, assessing and searching for weak links. The long-haired, quiet one reminds him of Saladin, which makes him the most bearable of the five. Then there's the engineer, who displays an in impressive knowledge of all things technical and little else. Darcy's favorite with the questionable haircut has an air of wariness about him, and the brunette chatterbox moves like he has experience in combat. Valtor's real target, however, is their leader. Prince Sky of Eraklyon is a name of little relevance in the political web of the dimension, besides the rather scandalous ending of a betrothal. Prior to his encounter with the Winx, all he knew about the boy was that he studied abroad and rarely showed his face on his home world. There have been rumors of possible attacks on him, and a double to take the blow if it came that far. Other than that, the Prince is a non-entity to the world and Valtor.

Even now, looking at the person who Bloom thought to be more important than the looming threat of war, he isn’t sure what to think of him. He is so... plain. The leader of his team, sure, and star pupil of Red Fountain. From the way he acts, he can go through all advanced combat forms in his sleep, and doubtlessly he has flawless manners. But other than that, there is nothing to make him stand out.

It is ironic, but studying the boy Bloom had clung to an hour prior actually makes Valtor less willing to kill him. It would be like shooting at pigeons: a matter of prestige and possibly skill, but ultimately pointless. His death would be the most interesting part of his life. And a mark on his own legacy as well: Valtor, despite his reputation, does not kill often. He turns and transmutes his lesser enemies, and permits others to kill on his behalf; his actions cause hundreds of deaths across countless systems. But only his strongest, most respected opponents deserve to die by his own hands. Over the centuries, that number remained surprisingly small.

He will not waste it on Erendor's failure of an heir.

A chanted spell, and the Spear is directed away from Red Fountain, away from Magix. Eraklyon is not known for magic, few powerful fairies and witches have their origin in Erendor's kingdom. It does, however, house the most powerful military of all systems. During the last war, it was strong enough to defend all major strongholds of the dimension with minimal local support. From Andros to Domino, from Solaria to Zenith: Eraklyon's armies fought in all major systems and did so successfully. Not thanks to Erendor's leadership, however, strategic prowess aside. The planet draws its strength from longstanding alliances: the highly populated moons in its orbit, the wealthy kingdom of Isis, the planet of Alcidion...

 _Isis_. Something rings a bell, there. Wealthy, magically developed. Known for the Tears of Isis, jewels that are supposed to heal every curse, every illness. Both king and queen perished in the last war, next in line to the throne is... Yes. That is what he was looking for.

The crown princess Diaspro of Isis, former fiancée of the next ruler of Eraklyon. Deeply offended at being disregarded, embarrassed by the royals of her neighbor kingdom. Her coronation is only two years away and she has yet to determine a replacement for her lost betrothed.

All the pieces are falling together so beautifully, as if the stars themselves decided to align for his plan. He won’t simply take away Bloom's suitor, he will turn him against her. He will use him to hurt her in ways he could not possibly achieve on his own.

Everything she holds dear he will strip her of, until he is all that she has left.

Until she can only dream of fire and fury.

Fire, fury and him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might have channeled a bit of my love for darklina, up there. I myself am rather neutral towards sky, but I hope the anti-sky faction is well fed now


	4. Isis (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plot stuff happens, and Valtor is in for a surprise.

Crown princess Diaspro of Isis turns out to be an excellent choice of an ally. She is well known for her ambition and shows interest in his little scheme from the first mention of the Prince's name. But she is not so desperate as to blindly trust a stranger, especially if said stranger is known to steal the magic of every planet he visits.

“I do not want your _word_ ,” she spits and throws her perfectly curled hair behind her shoulder. “I want an insurance. No harm can come to my planet, its magic or its people. Unless you can guarantee our safety, I will not be a part of whatever you have planned for the anniversary.”

“Your distrust wounds me, dearest Princess.”

Valtor steps towards the window, overlooking the royal gardens.

“Here I was, thinking you would take every chance to reclaim the heart of your beloved prince. But instead of thanking me for my offer, you insult me?”

The princess raises an eyebrow, but her eyes follow the slender flask in his hand with barely concealed greed. He has won already; all he needs to do is to let her reach that conclusion on her own.

“Your reputation precedes you.”, is her terse reply and he smiles.

“As does yours. The pride of Isis, fairy of gemstones, more connected to her native magic than any of her predecessors.”

She preens at his flattery and he turns around, smile darkening.

“Spurned by the highest son of Eraklyon.”

Her face seems to freeze.

“Slighted, _humiliated_ by her nations greatest allies. The people are wondering why, I've heard. Why would Prince Sky prefer a common-raised fairy of a dead planet over the noble, sophisticated Diaspro? And the _rumors_... well, I think you are well aware of what the people think.”

“I have done everything for this! I have done everything _right!”_ , the fairy growls. “What right do they have to judge me for this whole fiasco! I worked hard to land that engagement, and everyone would have prospered for it!”

He clicks his tongue in sympathy.

“Indeed. Who does Erendor think he is, to allow his son such fickleness? The strength of his nation depends on you.”

She eyes him, wary but intrigued.

“Is that what you get out of this? Weakening Eraklyon?”

“Oh, dear Princess, that is the opposite of my wish.” The words are true, surprisingly enough. “On the contrary: I wish for the same thing as you do! I want Isis and Eraklyon to prosper, to grow stronger than ever before.”

He waves a hand, and for a few moments, her jewel-adorned headband transforms into the golden crown of Eraklyon. The princess gasps at her reflection.

“I want _you_ as Queen of both, commanding the strongest military in the magical dimension. And when the time comes, well...”

The illusion of the crown flickers out and he extends the red flask to her.

“Then I hope you that will remember my support. That you will choose the right side, in a potential war.”

She taps her fingers together, tempted.

“My... My planet- “

“I will not add its magic to my growing little collection, I assure you. Though I may require access to it, at some point. For... educational purposes.”

Diaspro may be spoiled and selfish, but she is a gifted politician. Smart enough to see that he is a force to be reckoned with, that he has alternatives should she decline. Smart enough to see that he is her only chance, and that harming her worlds would be counterproductive to his goals.

Her hand closes around the flask.

“I have earned this,” she says, voice determined. “Sky will see. They'll all see.”

“You will not regret this.”

Valtor bows, the crown piece of his plan finally in place.

“ _Queen_ Diaspro.”

* * *

Almost a day remains until the grand celebration on Eraklyon, time he wants to spend undisturbed. He wants to watch Bloom enjoy her peace while it lasts, oblivious to how close he is to take it all away. Eraklyon is but the first move of a war that will shake her world, _tear it apart_ , and he so desperately wishes to bear witness to it all.

However, the Trix have been left to their own devices for too long. In his distraction, they have grown bored. Icy in particular: she has begun to feel entitled to his attention, and that makes her bold - too bold.

“One might think you'd show a little more enthusiasm!”, she snarls, after another fruitless attempt to distract him with the recently stolen codes of Espero. “What's with this sudden interest in Bloom?!”

“Do you think he's got a crush on her?” Darcy whispers to her sister, thinking herself to be out of earshot.

He can’t fault her for assuming. Even he realizes that his focus on the fire fairy is growing into an obsession, a rather obvious one as well. Every moment he isn’t spending in combat or on mastering new spells, he spends in front of the Eye of Callisto, watching Bloom's every step.

It was only a matter of time before the Trix took notice, and that time has come now, apparently. Icy's fist punches through the spell and he finally looks up, patience worn thin.

“I am studying her,” he says with practiced calm, though his words are a bit of an understatement. “Bloom is not to be underestimated - you of all people should know that.”

Icy scoffs and he decides she needs to mind her place.

“Perhaps, if you had paid more attention to her, you wouldn't have been sent to Omega in the first place.”

He tilts his head.

“It was her who defeated you at the siege of Alfea, wasn’t it? And her who left you for the Light Rock guards to collect, in Relix. Unless you'd prefer to blame your own short-sightedness.”

Icy's cheeks are red with indignation and she grits her teeth but remains quiet. He takes mercy on her.

“Now, no need to be so sensitive,” he smiles and turns to face her sisters. “After all, if you hadn’t been captured, we would have never met. And what a shame that would be, wouldn’t it?”

Stormy is quick to nod, and even Icy gives a begrudging “Fine”. But it's a temporary peace, he knows. The admiration that binds them to him can just as easily turn them against him, and he can’t afford to lose them at this crucial point. He hasn’t determined yet whether their bonds to the ancestral witches makes them more valuable or a liability. Until he can be sure they pose no threat to him, he will have to keep them close.

“Besides,” he starts and turns the Eye to Eraklyon, “I would hate for all my hard work to go unappreciated. Do you want to hear with whom I've had a little chat, recently?”

At the royal palace, Diaspro's hands clutch tightly around the potion bottle.

* * *

The three-thousand-year anniversary of Eraklyon is a perfect success - for Valtor, at the very least. The Trix are delighted by his cruelty and pacified by his willingness to hurt Blooms feelings. Apparently, they had feared his interest in her would cause him to go easy on her. And _that_ is an unfounded concern.

Diaspro wastes no time to flaunt her influence over her reclaimed lover: the Winx are branded traitors and chased out of the Palace, guards hot on their heel. And finally, the Prince showed something of a personality. He can be _bloodthirsty_ , to Valtor's great surprise, eager to please his princess and skewer the 'witches' on his sword. He watches with glee as Bloom cries out for him, begging him to remember. Her only reply is threats and insults, the Prince all but manic in his rage. Who would have thought? All it took for him to become interesting was a love potion and someone to hate. Under different circumstances, he would have made a decent ally.

As it is, he watches Bloom's foolish young heart break in real-time, and he relishes every second of it.

The evening has its drawbacks, however. Stella of Solaria gains her Enchantix form, and Countess Cassandra shows first signs of losing control over King Radius. It's not her magic that fails her, it’s her nerves. Pitiful, but a problem for another day. For now, he enjoys his vengeance.

“I gotta admit,” Icy comments as the Winx flee Eraklyon, tears in Bloom's eyes, “I might have been a little rash, the other day.”

“Yeah, all that studying you do seems to pay off!”, Darcy adds, only to shudder at her own words. “God, don’t let Ms. Griffin hear I said that.”

He holds up a hand, smiling.

“Actually,” he says, “you can go tell her yourself.”

They take over Cloud Tower that very same night.

* * *

He hasn’t seen Griffin in over twenty years. Time hasn’t been kind to her, or perhaps it was the stress of being headmistress but she aged considerably, and overwhelming her has been disappointingly easy.

Still, he waits outside her cell for her to wake up. He owes her that much.

“Here to gloat?”, are her first words to him after the battle. He leans his head to the side.

“A little.”

She snorts, dragging herself off of the ground and to her feet.

“Don't hold back then. Enjoy the moment while it lasts.”

“You expect to escape?”

Her confidence hasn’t faded, he sees.

“That. Or wait for my inevitable rescue. Whatever comes first.”

“Ah, yes. Holding out for your loyal friends at the company of light.” The words are poison in his mouth, but it is an old one. Stale rather than biting. “Trust me, they'll have other worries soon enough.”

She looks at him, calculating. Trying to figure out his plans.

“Fine,” she huffs after a while, “escape of my own, then.”

He laughs, shaking his head.

“You have not lost your sense of humor, old friend. Then again, it’s hard to take anything you say serious anymore.”

He eyes her, almost regretful.

“The powerful Griffin, mistress of great words. But when the time comes to _act_...”

“Still salty about that, are you?”

She doesn’t look at him, despite her sarcasm. He likes to imagine she has regrets as well.

“I trusted you.”

The words are quiet, but the most honest ones he can give her. Lying to her while she is already defeated would be disrespectful, and while he hates her with vengeance, she still has his respect.

Griffin, to her credit, has the decency to look ashamed.

“What do you want? An apology?”

“Hardly.”

That one is only half true, but his respect only goes so far. He would have liked one, useless as it may be.

He considered Griffin his friend, once, not just an ally. Ambitious, ruthless, hungry for knowledge, just like himself. All the other people he worked with over the centuries were loyal to his mothers first and foremost, but Griffin? She was _his_ ally, not theirs. It was his decision to bring her into the fold, and the witches only had so much power over her. He knew exactly, if it came down to it, she would have stood by his side. If he had decided to fight the Ancestresses, Griffin would have fought with him, _died_ with him, no questions asked. Whenever they marched into battle, she was always right behind him. Until she wasn’t.

“During my exile,” he begins, eyes nostalgic, “I always wondered... Why?” Such a simple question, yet so heavy. “We were so close to the end, already.”

She hums, pensive.

“There are some things not worth giving up for power. I realized that too late.”

“Save me the platitudes.”

He pushes away from the wall, facing her.

“Why,” he asks, “did you betray me.”

The look she gives him is long, unreadable. This is a Griffin he hardly knows.

“You would have failed.”

The words hit him harder than any of her spells could have. His eyes darken, and she continues.

“Their power over you was too great. Our plans were doomed from the start. Better to stop the four of you together than aid them at the slight chance of your potential coup.”

“After all those years, I assumed you'd have more faith in my abilities.”

“It's not your abilities I didn’t trust. And not your will, either. But Valtor, you must have realized it yourself. Even now, when they are all but dead, the power they hold over your very form is impossible for you to overcome.”

She looks at him with something akin to pity.

“They created you. They can unmake you. You wouldn’t have been able to overthrow them, and they would have ruled over the ashes of the dimension, unopposed.”

Sighing, she sits down on the bunk of her cell.

“In hindsight, I recognize that even if you were successful, a dimension beneath your thumb would have only been marginally better. You are your mothers' son.”

She knows so very well how he despises those words.

“That's Faragonda talking,” he decides and pushes them far away from him. Griffin laughs melancholically.

“Well, guilty as charged, I suppose. She can be so dreadfully persuasive.”

He's always wondered how Faragonda managed to convince Griffin to join the company of light. From the look on her face, it was by winning her heart.

How very typical of her.

“You never regretted it?”, he makes sure anyway. “Not once?”

“Sometimes. But...”, she shrugs, “With the company of light, I felt like I truly belonged. We are the same in so many ways. I only ever regretted that you could never follow.”

Of course he couldn’t. If he ever manages to kill his mothers for good, he won’t exchange one yoke for another.

And what for, really? Griffin's story disappoints him. If she were the witch he has taken her for, she would have seduced Faragonda to her side, _their_ side, instead of the other way around.

She sighs when he tells her so.

“I don’t expect for you to understand. How could you?”

The look she gives him is hard as granite.

“You've never felt a real connection to anyone, not even me. I don’t blame you! There's simply nothing like you in the universe.”

 _Nothing_. Anger rises up in him, an old, bitter one.

“Correction,” he presses out through clenched teeth, “there is _almost_ no one like me.”

Griffin, despite her age, still has one of the quickest minds in the magical dimension. Her eyes narrow as she grasps the meaning of his words.

“The girl suffered enough because of you. Have some decency.”

“That is _your_ thing, old friend. I have no such limitations.”

“You will break your teeth on her. She's Faragonda's favorite for a reason, you'll never get to her.”

He thinks of Ohm's spells in his hands.

“I already have. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

Griffin watches him like a hawk, ready to strike.

“You are a powerful sorcerer. What could you possibly want with an untrained fairy?”

He doesn’t have an answer to that, yet. But that is beside the point, what matters is that the idea unsettles the witch.

“Your attempts to protect Bloom are adorable. But, alas, I think our time has come to an end.”

“Will you kill me, now?”

The question is calm, controlled, but he knows there is fear in her. He shakes his head.

“No, old friend.”

He turns to leave, but stops at the door, eyes cruel.

“Not before I have killed all the others.”

Griffin's head sinks and he smiles.

“Starting with Faragonda.”

With that, Valtor leaves his oldest friend behind for good.

* * *

He wants to see Bloom. The connection between them keeps him up at night, beckoning him with the heat of her Dragon Flame, but it is too early to show himself again. There is one more loss she has to suffer before he will be content.

So instead, he busies himself with reading. Cloud tower has a wealth of chronicles and spell books, and while the latter are the more valuable, he keeps coming back to the chronicles. Griffin's words stuck with him, more than he would like to admit. He knows that sooner or later, the ancient coven will seek him out to command him once more, and he cannot allow that.

The Company of Light kept detailed records of everything regarding the Dragon Flame, presuming it to be lost with the fall of Domino. When he encountered Queen Marion, she was a powerful sorceress, but the Flame was already passed on to her firstborn. Daphne of Domino he never met, but the rumors of her power rippled across the dimension all the same. The youngest nymph of all times, and possibly the greatest, regarded as something akin to a goddess by some. No other fairy ever progressed so far so fast, and he regrets that she died so early. She would have given him a remarkable fight.

It poses questions. Why has he never encountered her, or her mother when she still held that power? He has killed several holders of the Flame, after his mothers failed to extract their fire, but in hindsight he notices that few of them held much magic beside it. They used it as a relic, a tool, not a power source. Not like Daphne was said to have, and not like Bloom does, now. Why did his mothers never send him after them?

The ancient coven were the ones to hunt the crown princess, while he distracted her parents. It seemed odd to him, then, that his mothers would want their most powerful weapon so far away from the real fight. Now, he can see a pattern in their behavior.

Something about the Dragon Flame in capable hands unsettled them. Made them decide to keep him away. And it certainly had little to do with maternal concern.

He doesn’t find more answers at cloud tower. The chronicles are incomplete, but there are references to other books. Books that can only be kept in one other library, by one other person.

Valtor stands up, straightening his cloak. The time has come to reach for Alfea.

* * *

The battle at the school is short, hard, and unsuccessful. His own battle in the forest, however, is far more entertaining. Faragonda may be old, but she fights with a strength she did not possess during the last war. He takes more than a few hits, but ultimately, she is an ordinary fairy and he a creation of void and fire. Her screams as her skin turns to bark are his just reward, his revenge for her constant meddling.

He wants to kill her, there. End it and watch as Bloom crumbles without her. But Faragonda is his oldest living enemy, and her death won’t be swift - not when her imprisonment could serve him far better. Not when it could bring him Bloom.

* * *

“What,” he asks, hands clenching to fists behind his back, “do you mean, _they're gone?”_

“The Winx showed up before we could take anything, and we could hardly carry an entire library away while fighting them.”

Stormy shrugs, unable to read the fury in his voice.

“So Darcy set it on fire! A burned spell is a spell not used against us, amiright?”

Her sisters take a step back, recognizing his mood for what it is.

“You burned the library of Alfea.” he repeats, hoping against all odds that they haven’t been so _utterly stupid_. “You destroyed the greatest collection of knowledge in Magix. The last surviving chronicles of Domino.”

Darcy pulls her sister back, carefully.

“Well, if you put it that way, it does sound- “

He throws her a single, sharp look and she falls quiet. It probably is what saves their lives; one more ignorant word and he would have exploded the entire room. All those records, all that knowledge... _gone_.

He sends them away with a sharp wave of his hand, summoning the Eye of Callisto to keep himself from murdering his closest allies. He needs them, he tells himself, he still has use for them. He would regret it, sooner or later.

Bloom does not fail to distract him. She and her friends are searching for their missing teacher, and when they find her... oh yes, her despair is just as sweet as he imagined. She will be easy to move, now. There is only one way to lift his curse, only one artifact with sufficiently strong healing powers, and he will wait for her at her destination.

His mercy on the Trix is rewarded not two hours later, when they drag a kicking, short haired fairy into his office.

“Good News!”, Stormy shouts, ecstatic at the prospect of his forgiveness, “We captured a little fairy, snooping around where she shouldn’t.”

“ _I_ captured her, _you_ just made fun of her while I did it.”

“No one likes a bragger, Icy. Anyway, Valtor, you're gonna be so happy: we just learned that the Alfea library is fine! Darcy totally failed at failing our job!”

“Stop pinning all the blame on me, you were there too!”

“We also learned,” Icy continues, pushing the frightened fairy forwards, “that another of the Winx got her fancy adult wings. You can ask our little intruder here which one!”

He dismisses the Eye, curious. The fairy in front of him is untransformed, and her dark red hair is cropped in a fashion popular among witches, rather than fairies. The magic surrounding her is young, like green sprouts on a cut twig.

“You were a student here, weren’t you?”, he asks the little thing. Transitioning from one branch of magic to another is an exhausting procedure, but she seems to have succeeded. Weak as her magic might be, it is undoubtedly fairy magic.

She cowers before him, shaking like a leaf.

“Please,” she whimpers, “I just want my friend back! I just want Lucy to be okay!”

He smiles in false sympathy, kneeling down in front of her.

“Now, now, don’t be scared. You'll find your friend to be in perfect health, I can assure you.”

Icy scoffs and the fairy jumps, terrified.

“What, are we coddling our prisoners now? Let _me_ talk to her, I promise she'll tell you whatever you want to know.”

The girl shivers, but stops when he places a hand on her shoulder.

“Ignore the Trix,” he tells her and gives the witches a look that is both warning and amused, “no one will harm you here. You have been so very brave, after all, to come all the way here, just for your friend.”

She makes herself small, shrinking away from the Trix and closer to him. Brave she might be, but also so fatally foolish, to see him as the lesser threat.

“Please,” she says, quietly. “I won’t tell anyone anything, I- I don’t even know anything to tell! I just want Lucy back.”

How quickly she forgets who he is when the alternative is the Trix.

“Of course,” he assures her, “that can certainly be arranged. You are a student at Alfea, are you not?”

She nods, confused, and behind her the witches light up in realization.

“Yes, b-but- I don’t know anything! I swear!”

“No need to be afraid, I won't ask anything of you. If you want to be with your friend, I am sure we can find a solution for you, little...”

“Myrta,” she sniffles, looking up at him. He pats her on the shoulder.

“Myrta,” he repeats, smiling. “I have a feeling we are going to be of much help to each other.”

He taps a finger against her neck and she drops like a stone, the glowing lines of his mark etching themselves into her skin.

* * *

Bloom arrives on Isis alone. It didn’t even take him a week to make her break her promise to the Winx. She hasn’t left them behind, of course: They are using Solaria’s portal ring to enter the east wing of the palace, to rejoin Bloom after she lured the guards to the west. As long as the crown princess' closet is on fire, no one will investigate a sudden flash of light in the guest wing.

Their plan does not account for him being present, and him being aware of their every movement. The Winx appear in a foyer, only to find themselves immediately surrounded by a battalion of guards. He does love having Isis' army at his beck and call.

Bloom, unaware of their capture, waits for her friends at the rendezvous point. She waits and waits until it becomes clear they aren’t coming. Her eyes race from the corridor leading east to the corridor to the treasure chambers, torn. If something kept her friends up, they could be in trouble. But if she leaves to help them, the Tears of Isis might be lost to her forever.

A patrol of guards closes in on her and she is forced to make a decision. The right decision, to his immense satisfaction.

Her wings carry her through the palace in silence, evading patrols by ducking behind archways and keeping close to the ceiling.

She would have made it to the treasures, probably, if he hadn’t given the guards her exact position. He watches through the Eye of Callisto as they surround her, weapons drawn.

Bloom, to her credit, does not go down without a fight. Flames blast through the hallways, singeing expensive carpets and tapestries. But in such close quarters she can’t escape, and soon enough her arms are tied by glowing ropes, too heavy for her to fly. Finally, she is in his grasp once more.

He dismisses the eye and sits down, waiting in agonizing anticipation. As expected, Bloom is fighting and trashing against her constraints when she is brought into the throne room. But she stops dead in her tracks when the jewel adorned doors swing open, even before she sees him. The connection between them is positively glowing at their proximity, announcing his presence just before her eyes find him.

He sits on the throne of Isis, in full command of the palace while Diaspro enjoys her engagement party on Eraklyon. The princess was only too eager to allow him every privilege he could wish for, especially after he informed her that Bloom intended to take the Tears. Now that she has regained her position in Erendor's court, the only thing she fears is that her rival might steal it away from her again.

“No,” Bloom whispers, eyes wide. He smiles at her and leans back in the throne, legs crossed.

“Your reactions never fail to delight me,” he chuckles and waves his hand at the guards. “Release her and leave us. Your job here is done.”

The guards don’t like to see an outsider on their throne, but their loyalty to Diaspro is greater than their pride. They do as he wishes and deactivate the chains, doors falling shut behind them.

Finally, _finally_ alone with her, he stands up and steps down the stairs.

“I take it you didn’t expect me here. A pity, really. I could feel you the second you stepped foot in this palace.”

“You- “, she takes a step back, “You are in league with Diaspro! _You_ did this to Sky!”

Her wings flutter, once, as if to underline her outrage. His smile deepens.

“Oh, that’s why you are here? I assumed you'd want to save your green-thumbed headmistress. How is she, by the way? I thought about burning her down to the stump, but... well. Then you wouldn’t be here, would you?”

A red glow collects in her clenched fists, but she does not move. Doesn’t give him the satisfaction just yet.

“Is that why you kept her alive? As bait?!”

“As a reminder as well,” he chats on, “just for you. Now all it takes is a little spark on a dry day, and your mentor goes up in flames. Perhaps you should avoid her from now on.”

His eyes lower themselves to her hands, which have begun to spark like raging bonfires. She flexes her fingers and the glow subsides, recognizing his threat for what it is.

“It's funny, isn’t it?”, he talks on, his tone light. “How our roles can be reversed so quickly. With me as the guardian of an unsuspecting planet, and you as the thieving intruder. I admit, I could get used to this.”

“Don't.”, is her terse reply. “It will be over before you know it.”

“Your threats have been rather empty, up to now.”

He stops his advance, right in front of her. Even with the heels of her transformation, she is noticeably smaller than him. He doesn’t think he'll ever tire of the way she has to look up at him.

“Not that I don’t enjoy your bravado. But why would they impress me, now?”

She glares at him.

“Haven’t you noticed?”, she says with a sharp, angry smirk. “Every time you hit us, we only come back stronger. First Layla, then Stella, now Musa. With each attack you make us more powerful.”

She has a point. Ironically, killing them would be far easier if they weren’t so hellbent on dying. He runs his fingers along the soft line of her jaw, and she is too stubborn to break eye contact, to draw away from him. Their connection seems to warm at the contact.

“Not you, Bloom.”, he says softly, almost apologetically. “ _Them_. There's no one left to give you your Enchantix, after all. And all that you have left now, I can take away from you.”

Her brave facade crumbles, pain clawing its way out of the cracks.

“Why Sky?”, she asks eventually, voice thin. Her eyes tear up just a little. “I get why you would confront Ms. Faragonda, but why him? He was no threat to you!”

The words soothe what remains of his fury, on more levels than she knows.

“How very, very true.”

He brushes her hair out of her eyes and their connection hums contently.

“But you know the answer to that question already, don’t you? It was you, after all, who decided his fate.”

“Me...?”, she blinks, confused, “but what did I- “

“Don't you remember?”

His grasp on her hair tightens, nails barely raking over her scalp, the way he had held her in the garden of her dreamscape. She flinches just a little, glaring at him.

“I told you I could be cruel, if you antagonize me,” he says, “But still, after I gave you every chance to back down, you persisted. And what was it I said? Ah, yes.”

The smile her gives her is positively gleeful.

“If you insist on expanding our battlefield, I will not deny you. And, true to my word, I gave you all the collateral damage you could wish for.”

Her eyes widen and she goes very, very still.

“No,” she breathes, “I dreamed that. It wasn’t real.”

“It wasn’t! Except for when it was.” He chuckles. “Spells from Ohm are so wonderfully abstract. I should have gone there much sooner.”

She tears away from him and he lets her, watching with amusement as her lips twist into a snarl.

“You,” she spits, “have gone too far.”

Her feet leave scorched footprints on the carpet and the air begins to simmer around her, boiling with her rage. It is _beautiful_ , and when she attacks, he doesn’t dodge. Instead he holds up a hand, summoning a small, shining object into his palm, just before she can hit him. She gives a startled shout when she recognizes it and redirects her attack: two blasts of dragon fire hit the curtains behind him. He doesn’t need to turn around to know the fabric is pulverized almost instantly. Bloom is left standing before him, fists still smoking, inches away from his raised hand.

“Astonishing reflexes,” he notes and smiles at her little growl. “You know how delicate those Tears of Isis are.”

And they are. The pale green jewel in his hand is barely the size of his palm, and it would take considerably less than the dragon flame to shatter it. He closes his hand around it and lowers it into a pocket of his coat, Bloom's eyes following every movement.

“I took the liberty to borrow one of them, just in case,” he explains. “Unfortunately, I promised our dear friend Diaspro that I would not steal away her precious magic. If you want it, you'll have to take it.”

“What do you _want_ from me?”, Bloom snarls, hands shaking with residue magic. His eyes darken.

“Everything,” he gives back, teeth bared. “Everything you have to give. But for now?”

He adopts a fighting stance, burning with anticipation.

“Fight me and _mean_ it. I am holding your friend's life in my hands! _Take it from me.”_

She doesn’t hesitate. With something that can only be described as a roar, she shoots forward, eyes blazing and fire in her fists. This is nothing like the way she fought on Callisto. There is a desperation behind every movement now, he made this _personal_. She brings the wrath of a true dragon down on him, and he relishes every second of it. Any other fairy would rely on ranged spells and elegant light beams, controlled and precise. But Bloom, so oblivious to fairy customs, fights with her entire body. Every blast of flames is directed by a vicious blow of her fists and she throws herself behind every attack. Their magic clashes like tidal waves, all-consuming and merciless and _brilliant_. He wants, _needs_ more.

“I wonder,” he shouts over the roaring of the flames she sends his way, “who will be the lucky one to receive this gem, if you are successful?”

She takes flight, only to have more momentum when she pushes against his shields with a wall of fire. He steps aside and deflects the brunt of it into a wall.

“Only one tear, but two innocent victims of mine,” he taunts, “Which one of them will you save?”

“Shut _up!”_ , she growls, every inch of her skin covered in flames.

“My bet is on Faragonda. Selfless as you are, I’m sure you will gladly sacrifice your Prince - and his free will - for your teacher's life.”

Her magic burns so hot it looks almost blue, and he has to duck beneath a blast that melts a gold sculpture instead.

“Of course that would require you to actually defeat me.”

He grins at her, invigorated by her fury. Rarely does he feel this utterly, painfully alive. With raised hands he summons a blast of his own, throwing her back against a wall.

This fight isn’t just entertainment, there is method to his taunts. He wants to see how far he can push her, where her limits are. How their connection plays into all of this.

And he wants to enjoy her undivided, single-minded focus on him. No Winx, no Trix to interrupt them; this time, he has her all to himself. His pretty little enemy falls to the floor and shakes the numbness out of her wings, before launching herself at him with a shout.

Bloom is relentless. She succeeds to gain ground, pushing him back with one brutal attack after another. It is exhilarating; she meets him with her full, unbridled strength at every turn, so _genuine_ in her anger, giving him every ounce of her power and more. He relishes in the knowledge that no one else could ever witness this side of her and survive, that not even the Trix with their ancestral magic could stand against her. _This_ is the opponent he has been waiting for. His unexpected miracle: the very last princess of Domino, all primal strength and fierce, beautiful fury.

He captures the brunt of her next attack in his palm, and a spell he took from Cloud Tower turns the flames into a raging thunderstorm. She has to take cover, shields bursting beneath the force of his lightning, and with a wave of his hand he rips a number of marble tiles right off of the floor. Like sharpened projectiles he sends them after her, forcing her into the air and on the defense. The thrill of magic reverberates through their connection.

“Is that everything?”, she presses out between clenched teeth, destroying his projectiles with a series of well-aimed blasts. There is a sheen of sweat on her temples, betraying how much effort it takes her, but in her eyes is a feverish delight he knows only too well. She enjoys fighting him as well, intoxicated by the heat of battle and the siren-song of their shared power.

“If the stakes are not high enough for you,” he continues, grinning, “perhaps I should tell you why the rest of your fellow fairies haven't arrived yet.”

Her eyes widen and he uses her distraction to summon a hand of stone from the ground, plucking her right out of the air.

“They tried to put up a fight,” he says casually as the hand encases her, pulling her down, “but even a fully realized fairy can’t fight an endless supply of soldiers.”

His smile deepens when a fiery glow begins to shine through the gaps between the stones.

“I do hope they attempt to escape. The palace guard is far less tolerant of your defiance than I am, and those Enchantix wings are such inviting targets...”

The stone fist explodes around her, molten rock flying in every direction. With a battle cry Bloom blasts through his shields, raining fire down on him until he has to retreat almost all the way to the thrones.

She is _glorious_. Her entire body is glowing with magic, too great to be contained, and when she raises her hand it is as if the fire of a thousand stars answers to her call. For a brief moment he swears the flames take the form of a dragon, alive with her fury.

He does not wait to look closer.

Before she can direct it against him, he launches forward and grabs her wrist. In the blink of an eye he raises her fist into the air and pulls her too close to fight him, his free hand ensnaring her bare waist. She doesn’t have the time to dismiss her power.

On Polaris, he used a small, innocent spell to hide her from the drakes; the first magic he ever used while touching her. The effect has been profound and immediate: a heady rush of magic as if a circuit had been closed, and a hunger for more: more power, more proximity, _more of her_. All caused by a this minute spell, a mere change in temperature.

This is no such spell.

Her power blasts up into the air and through the glass dome above them, an inferno conquering the night sky like an exploding volcano. Shards are swallowed by the flames before they can even begin to fall, and the raging pillar of fire burns so high, so bright that the entire capitol will whisper about a dragon above the palace come morning.

And he feels it all, their connection pulled taut between them. He feels every flame beneath her skin, every whisper of magic in her bones. He is hit by such an ecstatic rush of power he has to close his eyes, just to remain standing, and it isn’t even _his_ spell that caused it. All the while never loosening his hold of the all but burning fairy in his arms. _Never_.

The fire dies down, quietly. Bloom in his arms is motionless, and for a few seconds, all that can be heard is their strained, heavy breathing.

“Magnificent,” he whispers eventually, genuinely awed. And suddenly Bloom's hands are clutching the revers of his coat, and she shoves him back against the wall with such _force_ he considers it an attack until the very last moment. But then her lips are on his own and they’re so _charged_ with magic they could light him on fire, if he weren’t made from it already. She kisses him the same she way she fought, all rage and instinct and unbridled desperation. He can't remember whether he decided that there's been enough combat for today, but at this point he doesn’t care either: he pulls her closer and returns her kiss with just as much ruthlessness. This is the first time he can touch her while transformed, and he notes just how much he likes her fairy form. He silently thanks her subconscious for the kind of clothing it created, and even more for the clothing it didn’t. His hand runs over her exposed waist and follows the curve of her bottom, memorizing every little piece of her. She moans, such an amusingly _furious_ sound, and crosses her legs behind him when he lifts her up. Her skin is burning hot against his, residue magic sparking where they touch.

“I hate you,” she hisses when she has to break away for air, and the words ring sweetly in his ears. “ _I hate you!”_

There are angry tears in her eyes, but before he can decide whether to mock or to soothe her, she is already back to kissing him, viciously. He laughs into her mouth and tangles his free hand in her hair, exhilarated by the way she clings to him. This Bloom has burned up all of her gentleness, and she kisses him like she wants to kill him. She does, in all likelihood. But he can’t find it in himself to care, not when her arm snakes behind his neck to pull him closer, not when she is the one who so desperately hungers for him, this time.

And it is a hunger, this delirious desire between them, he knows that all too well. An all-consuming need for the source of it, impossible to ignore. It turns her into a brazen, selfish little thing, and he is all too happy to indulge her.

The hand that isn’t buried in his hair - and what a thrilling sensation _that_ is - is roaming over his chest and beneath his coat, and for once he truly regrets wearing so many different layers. She growls into his mouth, evidently sharing his opinion, and settles for grabbing the fabric of the back of his vest. Her nails dig into his back through the cloth, uncaring in her desire. _Stars_ , how he adores her like this.

Bloom, so delightfully greedy, uses her grip on his hair to tilt his head back and explore his neck with her mouth. The contrast between the softness of her lips and the all but _violent_ way she uses them makes him curse, even more so when he realizes that this is likely the first time she ever dared to do this. There's no finesse in the way she kisses him, only instinct and a burning, grim curiosity. But it might just be that raw, almost innocent ambition of hers that makes his eyes fall shut in pleasure, his hand run through her hair in encouragement. It takes him a moment to understand she is mimicking him, imitating the way he had kissed her on Polaris. For a second, he doesn’t know whether to laugh at her inexperience or to kiss her for it, to _consume_ her and her wide-eyed eagerness. But then she grinds her hips against his and amusement becomes the last thing on his mind. He pushes back against her with a snarl until her back hits the adjacent wall. Distantly he notices that the thrones are just two steps away, but he can’t pay that thought much attention when he is busy running his hand beneath the fabric of her top. Bloom arches into his hand and moans when he cups the smooth, silky skin of her breast. He brushes a thumb over the stiff peak, reminiscing the way she had touched herself all those nights ago in her room. Her left hand clenches in his hair and she sucks in a sharp breath.

The hand clawing at his back somehow managed to slip beneath his vest and shirt, and now it roams over the bare skin of his back, triumphant. He smiles into her mouth, relishing how bold she is becoming.

As if to wipe his smirk off of his face her nails scratch over his lower back, not hard enough to draw blood but sure to leave marks. In return, he bites down on her lower lip and pinches her nipple, making her hiss. The grip on his hair tightens, but when he runs his hand over the edge of her gossamer wings, she can’t help but melt into him. She is so _responsive_ , so mercurial, and if he didn’t think his obsession with her could get any worse, he is now proven wrong. He is painfully hard against her and she shows no intention to dismiss that fact. The roll of her hips against him is instinctual, hungry rather than experimental. Between the addictive heat of their connection and the desire burning through her veins, there is no more room for hesitation. She is unleashed, any sense of timidity or something as nonsensical as _morals_ forgotten. Her thighs are clamped tightly around his hips as she grinds against him, drawing him in, and the hand in his hair falls to the side of his coat, pulling his chest flush against her. He is eager to comply, moving his hand from her back to cup the delectable curve of her bottom. His fingers dig into the firm muscle, cursing the fact that removing magical clothes requires too much spellwork to do without separating from her. And that is a sacrifice he is absolutely not willing to make, right now.

Instead he rocks into her pelvis at just the right angle to make her gasp, and she breaks away from him to suck in a sharp breath.

“Valtor,“ she pants, eye's half-lidded and lips swollen, “I-”

Now that he has heard her say his name with such helpless desire, he doesn’t want to her say it any other way again.

“Yes?”

His smug satisfaction at her state must echo in his voice, but he can’t bring himself to care. He runs his lips over her throat, basking in the way she struggles for words. Her hand comes up to his collar, steadying herself against his chest.

“I...”

From one moment to the next, her weight rests on her own two feet. Suddenly, her gaze is clear and proud, _smug_ even. By the time he realizes the change, there's a grim smile on her lips.

“I win.”

He blinks.

In her palm, resting against his chest, is the sparkling Tear of Isis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was getting so long I had to split it. Continuation will follow, but sadly, I won't be able to update at this pace anymore.
> 
> In the meantime, come visit me on my freshly created [tumblr](https://rist-ix.tumblr.com/)!  
> I'll post fanart and previews there, and would love to have someone to talk shit about Fate with. Also I'd like to hear your opinions on whether Valtor would use butt, ass or something like "derriere" in his head, because I’ve been agonizing over that question for almost 24 hours now and also spend way too much time on the synonym page. It seriously /bums/ me out. My creativity really hit rock /bottom/ there.  
> Jesus Christ have mercy.


	5. Isis (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valtor goes full bloomsexual, and I, once again, ruin his life.  
> Diaspro is pissed that she'll have to renovate.

The jewel seems to mock him in her hand.

Valtor prides himself on his vigilance and his foresight, yet he has no idea when or how Bloom managed to sneak her hand into his pocket. He did plan for her to have the Tear, at one point, mainly to torment her with having to choose between her lover and her mentor. But that was supposed to be weeks from now; after the fragility of everything she loved had time to sink in, and it would have been on his terms. He did not expect for her to actually take it from him, to _play_ him like this.

There is a snarl on his lips when he grabs her wrists and slams them against the wall on each side of her head, daring her to even think about escaping.

He is _livid_. He is _ecstatic_.

This devious little minx that is the holder of the Dragon Flame manipulated him, _him_ , and did so artfully. Despite all her blue-eyed righteousness she has the teeth and voracity to deserve her power, and the will to take what she wants when pushed too far. Faragonda would be _horrified_ , appalled by Bloom's actions, and he wants her all the more for it. His cunning, two-faced little equal, this radiant creature in his arms who could upheave the universe if she wanted to but somehow chooses not to. Who is proving to be so much more than he could have expected, could have _wished_ for; who is perfectly capable of greatness without the chains of her morals. How he loathes her, how he reveres her, how he wants to tear her apart.

Her eyes are still shining with arousal, her breathing still too quick, proof that he didn’t misjudge the effect their bond had on her. And still, _and still_ she found a way to spite him and get her way. Her fist is shut tight around the Tear, not wanting to lose her prize but she grins up at him anyway, so smug and infuriating and utterly _magnificent_.

“You win,” he acknowledges with a growl, teeth bared and fuming with a heady mix of outrage and _agonizing_ want. In this moment, he knows that he cannot let her go - not now, not even when the time has come to kill her. Because what could possibly come after her? He won’t be content with defeating her, knowing that no one else will ever live up to her. If she perished, she would condemn him to another endless eternity of empty victories and mediocre opponents, to a dimension of nothingness.

The thought makes his restraint snap. He releases her wrist to wrap his hand around her throat, pulling her against him as he descends on her lips once more. The time for games is over, ended by her own thieving hand.

Bloom notices the change despite her haze of want and triumph, but if she realized the gravity of it, she probably wouldn’t return his kiss. Oblivious and far too eager she parts her lips for him, allowing him to conquer her mouth with a smug little sound. Stars, her _mouth_. She tastes of laughter and magic, of a thousand spells uttered in glorious fury. He wants to taste her screams instead, her despair and pain and pleasure.

His nails dig into the sensitive skin of her back, rougher than he should allow himself to be, yet by far not hard enough to satisfy his urge to mark her, brand her, _own_ her. Bloom's muscles tense beneath her skin and she gasps, noticing that the wall behind her has disappeared. He's lifted her up with one hand beneath her thigh, returning her to her earlier position against his pelvis, and pulls away from the wall so that her entire weight rests in his arms. Their connection shudders with rightness, as if this is exactly how it was always supposed to be.

When he sets her down again, it is with great reluctance and on Diaspro's throne. She looks up at him almost feverishly, drunk on victory and arousal, oblivious to her surroundings. Oh how he _loves_ being the center of her attention.

She seems to pick up on his satisfaction, because her hand tightens around the Tear of Isis and she holds it jealously against her chest.

“You're not getting it back.”

Uncaring, he grabs her wrist and pins it against the frame of the throne. It's in his way, anything between them is.

“To hell with that thing,” he snarls and wastes no more time to reclaim her lips.

Bloom melts into him, both satisfied with his answer and a little alarmed. He has her distracted from the latter in a matter of seconds, when he runs his hand over the fabric covering her cunt. She gives a sharp, keening sound that makes him move his mouth to her neck for no other reason than not to obstruct the moans that leave her lips. The hand that isn’t still pinned against the throne returns to his hair, threading through the strands as if she fears he will turn away. What a ridiculous idea that is, as if he possibly could; but he has the feeling she's grown fond of his hair. The thought is far too appealing to him.

“Lose the transformation,” he utters against her throat. He can almost feel the wetness coating the inside of her undergarments, separated by just a hint of magical fabric, and it's driving him mad. Bloom, picking the worst possible time to provoke him, shakes her head.

He sinks his teeth into her skin - stars, how he has _missed_ that! - and crooks a finger of the hand gripping her wrist, summoning one of the tiles he'd used earlier. The marble projectile hovers suspended mid-air, pointed straight at the Tear in her hand.

“Change back,” he repeats, voice hoarse, “or I'll shatter it, right here.”

He doesn’t need to see her face to know that she is scowling, but she does not attempt to free her hand with physical strength - such a quick learner. She is corned: ever since her little inferno she's been running on fumes, and every bit of magic used while touching him would only fuel her own desires. With gritted teeth she gives up on her fairy-form, light washing over her skin to replace protective, magic-induced cloth with jeans and cotton.

A growl vibrates through the skin of her throat. He turns it into a moan with a flick of his fingers, pulling the damp fabric of her slip aside so he can touch her. And now it is him who moans, because she is positively _dripping_ with arousal, and he imagines how she will feel around his shaft, how she will clench around him, the _sounds_ she'll make-

He pulls away from her, to regain control over his thoughts before he goes completely insane. The sight that greets him is anything but helpful: Bloom is looking up at him from glazed eyes, teeth dug into her full bottom lip. Her disheveled locks fan out against the royal blues of the throne cushions, begging him to run his hands through them, and her chest is heaving with short, panted breaths. She glares at him with an unashamed, wanton challenge in her eyes, despite being all but caged by him.

“Look at you,” he utters, and even he isn’t sure whether he says it in awe or derision. It could be both and neither. Bloom's cheeks flush, and he uses this rare moment of bashfulness to pull the hem of her jeans skirt up, revealing more and more of her thighs. Her hand, the one he'd very much enjoyed in his hair, drops to his shoulder to halt his arm. There is a sense of alarm in her eyes, and he can see why well enough. He has touched her before, on Callisto and Polaris, in her dreams. But there is a different kind of intimacy to removing her clothes, one that unnerves her far more than his touch did. He is beyond caring, however.

“Wait- “, she starts, but he seals her mouth with his and bunches her skirt up above her hips, before returning his hand to her gloriously soaked nether lips. Her legs kick on each side of him, startled. When he pulls back to look at her, she is panting with want and the hand that tried to slow him is clinging to his collar. Her cunt, flushed and glistening with arousal, is so wonderfully exposed to his gaze and he drinks in the way she averts her head, can’t meet his eyes.

“Bloom,” he purrs her name, hungrily, to make her look at him. When she refuses, he lowers his face to her abdomen and presses a single, mockingly chaste kiss to her skin, just above her sex. Her gaze snaps to him, and the sound she makes is _damning_.

“Is this what you imagined, when you touched yourself?”, he asks, voice low and hoarse, drunk on the way she squirms beneath him. This question and many more have burned on his mind for far too long, and he will hear answers to them all, today. She stiffens and his grip around her wrist tightens in response, but his lips on her skin are gentle.

“Answer me.”

“How do you- “, she cuts off, cornered and defensive, “I, I didn’t- “

His tongue moves against her, just a hairs breadth away from the heated flesh of her cunt, and her voice fails her.

“I've been inside your head,” he mutters, decidedly not in the mood for games, “Do not attempt to lie to me.”

Her eyes darken.

“Why ask, then?”, she growls, and his already thin patience begins to wane. “If you've read my mind.”

He doesn’t correct her misconception that Ohm's spells classify as “mind-reading”, and that fact alone speaks volumes about his current state of mind.

“You humor me,” he says instead, and holds her gaze as he drags his thumb over the swollen nub of her clit, “and I humor you.”

Her breathing quickens, and where she had faltered to look at him before, she now seems unable to look away. And yet, she is foolish enough to want to rile him.

“What makes you think I wasn’t thinking about Sky?”, the reckless fairy presses out.

That name grows old rather quickly.

He all but kneels between her legs and has no wish to move, so instead his hand shoots up to ensnare her neck and pull her forward to him. The look she gives him practically dares him to try and frighten her, so that’s not what he does. His hold around her throat is hard, just this side of painful, but when he runs his thumb over the side of her neck it is almost reverent. It's the spot he marked on Polaris, the exact same one she had caressed that night in her bed, and her eyes widen in recognition.

When he lets go of her, there is a grim smile on his face and Bloom knows better than to play ignorant.

“Answer,” he says roughly, “the question.”

She swallows. There is a sliver of doubt in her eyes now, the dawning realization that she might have bitten off more than she can chew. She attempts to draw back, but a flick of his thumb on her clit makes her strength give out and she falls back. How he revels in having this power over her, in being able to render her defenseless with a single touch. And she _is_ defenseless, at his mercy.

All his.

His mouth returns to her exposed cunt, and he finally allows himself to kiss her glistening, velvet nether lips. How he has managed to restrain himself so long is beyond him, the taste of her desire makes his head swim. A strangled gasp fights its way out of her lungs and she jolts as if he struck her. Her hand finds his hair again, desperation eating away her self-control. She actually _shivers_ against him and he has to force himself to draw back, even though everything compels him to continue.

“What were you thinking of,” he repeats, and her desperation is mirrored in his voice. Her eyes fall closed and she shakes her head, mouth pressed shut. He growls against her cunt, the sensation making her lips form a perfect “o”. His tongue follows the curve of her sex up to the point that makes her quiver, and he basks in her reactions with flagrant glee.

“Did you imagine this?”

He watches, enraptured, as her head falls back against the throne, and he's sure somewhere behind him her toes are curling.

“Did you want me on my knees for you?”, he asks, heady with want, in between pressing long, open-mouthed kisses to her searing flesh. His voice is beginning to sound breathless. When her resistance doesn’t falter, he pulls back and she whines.

“ _Tell me,_ ” he all but rasps, and finally she crumbles.

“I don't know,” she hisses, so painfully frustrated that there are actual tears in her eyes. “I just- I never...”

He can conclude her meaning well enough, but stars, if the words don’t do things to him. His thumb circles the sensitive bundle of nerves, and he can’t take his eyes off of her face.

“Tell me,” he repeats, growing more and more desperate. She melts into his touch, more vulnerable than she had ever been to him, even in the depths of her sleeping mind. The proof of his own arousal is pressing against the unyielding gold of the throne. And while he is dying to feel her around him, he knows that he can’t simply take what he wants. He's no bumbling amateur after all, not like her juvenile prince would have been, and he will hear her _beg_ before he takes her.

“You never...?”

His fingers on her clit still and Bloom gives a sound that might be a moan, might be growl, but is positively tortured in nature. He leans up to her until their faces are mere inches apart, until he shares her breath, the warmth of her skin. Until he is everything she can see.

“...did that,” she blurts out, quietly, “before. I never tried to- “

His control fails him. He cuts her off with his lips, swallowing her words with the hunger of a starving man. His patience has been thoroughly depleted, spent entirely on making her say what he already suspected, on hearing her admit it. No promise of further confessions could be worth the wait, now that he has this exhilarating knowledge with all its marvelous implications. Maybe Bloom truly loves the princeling, or maybe she is just young and impressionable, but it _doesn’t matter_ anymore, because she never _desired_ him like this. Never wanted, craved anyone enough to make her pleasure herself - no one except Valtor, no one except him. This part of her is all his, awakened and cultivated by his own hand, and everything else is secondary.

She must taste herself on his lips, because she moans even before his hand returns to her cunt. When she breaks away for air, her hand on his collar is trembling and she's leaning against his chest as if she can’t stay upright otherwise. The feeling is addictive. To see her seek his proximity of her own volition, and cling to him with such abandon sends a burning heat up and down his spine. He buries his face in her hair, inhaling deeply as he feels her clamp down on his fingers. His thieving, reckless, greedy little fairy, moaning into his shoulder so helplessly, all his, _all his_.

No more Faragonda, and no more prince whose affections could be swayed so easily, who could never _unravel_ her this way.

“What would Diaspro say, seeing you in her throne?”, he whispers to her, gripped by some twisted, possessive pride, “With her most powerful ally kneeling before you?”

She shakes her head against him, voice failing her, but she shudders at his words with grim satisfaction, so unbefitting of a good little fairy.

“She thinks she has won,” he says, delighted, and caresses her most sensitive spot, “but here you are.”

The weight of her head against his shoulder disappears, replaced by her lips on his neck. So eager, so desperate; burning to release the tension he builds in her.

“In her own home, still finding a way to spite her.”

He grins into her unruly locks.

“You vengeful little thing.”

She must see it now. How her spineless prince could not possibly be worth her time, if he fell for Diaspro's spell so easily. How she is so much more than the boy, or the envious princess, or any other being in this dimension safe for him. That they, the two of them, are apart from everyone else, _above_ them.

His thumb runs over her clit, making her teeth sink into his skin out of startled reflex, and all rational thought is torn from his mind. He hisses her name and claws at her shirt as if the fabric insulted him, until he can roam his free hand over her bare back and feel the pulse of her power beneath him. She is close, so close and soon he will head her cry in pleasure, will finally be rid of all this offending clothing and _take_ her, like he has wanted to do for far too long. He holds her to him greedily, covetously, like she is a stolen treasure to be hoarded.

She murmurs something into his skin, something he thinks might be his name, and if she begged him now like she did on Polaris he would give her all the Tears Isis has to offer. Everything she could possibly ask for. In this moment, he is hers almost as much as she is his.

There are explosions in the distance, and palace guards shout in alarm. He barely hears them over the sound of his blood rushing in his ears. But what he does not miss is the way Bloom stiffens, eyes widening in something that is decidedly panic. It kills her desire like poison.

“No,” he growls through clenched teeth, pulling her against his chest when she moves to pull away. “ _No._ ”

His grip around her is vice-like, as if he could bind her to him with physical strength alone. He's willing to try. As long as she stays right where she is, with him, and doesn’t move further than an arm's reach away.

Another explosion makes loose shards fall from the shattered dome and Bloom struggles against him in earnest.

“Let- Let me go.”

He's not willing to repeat himself a third time, so instead his lips collide with hers in some sort of desperate denial. In return she _bites_ him, hard enough to draw blood, and the hands that clung to him just seconds earlier now strain to push him away. He pulls back with a hiss, arousal mixing with a fury so strong it leaves him shaking. In her throne Bloom glares up at him without remorse, his blood glistening on her lips and _stars_ , she looks both feral and more _regal_ than any queen he's ever met. Her tongue darts out to swipe the red off of her lip, and her fate is sealed. He can't, won’t let her leave again. Not now.

The expression in his eyes must speak volumes, because she looks almost fearful for a moment. _Good_. Let her see exactly what she's gotten herself into.

He is burning with the desire to taste his blood on her lips, the arousal coating her thighs; to impale her on his cock until she screams, but fate has other plans. The windows rattle with the force of another blast, closer this time, and she attempts to stand up. He is faster: with a snarl he has her arms pinned against the frame of the throne, and a furiously muttered spell brings the golden armrests to life. Like gnarly roots they curl around her upper arms, chaining her to her seat. The rush of want following his magic barely even registers against the depth of his desire.

“You,” he presses out, “are not going anywhere.”

The look she gives him is intoxicating, so shocked and _unsettled_ ; the delicious realization that she has lost control of the situation. And a hint of arousal beneath all this that makes him want to take her right there. When he kisses her again, furious and _delirious_ with want, she can’t keep back the whine that built in her throat. Their connection positively sings. She is so warm beneath him, the scent of her magic and desire beckoning him, and when the next explosion makes her jump and tear away from him, it is _agony_.

He looks over his shoulder and towards the doors with so much violence the lavish wood actually creaks. Someone is going to pay for this, and they will pay _dearly_.

“Wait,” Bloom says when he turns towards the entrance, “no, stop!”

There is panic in her voice now, sweet in his ears, as she realizes what he plans to do. He doesn’t have look back to see how she is straining against her constraints, the image in his head looks enticing enough as it is. Every fiber of his body demands that he stay, turn back and finish what he started, but he pushes himself towards the hallway anyway. The doors fly open with such force its jeweled decorations shatter against the walls, and he knows the battle is close. He storms through two more hallways until flashes of light come from just around the corner, followed by pained shouts of the guards. The Winx are here to save their missing friend, to take her away and back to Alfea, and he burns with such rage the crystal chandeliers behind him splinter. He is going to _kill them._

The first fairy flies around the corner and doesn’t even have the time to scream before his spell swats her into the wall like an insect. The second one rushes to her side and shields her from the next blast, eyes widening when she sees him.

“It's Valtor! Watch out!”

Her warning is the last thing to leave her mouth before the wall opens up to encase her in stone. A beam of light is aimed at his head and he crushes it in his fist, sending his own blasts against the offender. The blonde princess goes down with a scream, shot right out of the air. He raises his hand to burn her to a crisp, but a vine of ivy tears his arm to the side just in time to make the spell miss. His target takes cover behind a sculpture and he turns towards the flower fairy instead, setting her green weaponry ablaze. The scorched vines trash wildly in their death throes and the fairy barely escapes their flaming grasp, burns covering her legs. The one he had thrown into a wall has managed to regain her footing and summons pink barriers to stop the stone from swallowing her friend, who must be close to suffocating by now. A flash of light tells him she summoned her fairy dust, and he decides that blindness is the least thing she has to fear from him now.

“Stella, cover me!”

The lightning spell headed for her back is deflected by glowing shields as the solarian princess rejoins the fight. He doesn’t bother with taunts, instead he clenches a fist and brings the ceiling down on them. The few guards that remained standing flee at this display of his power, but he doesn’t care. Every moment here is a moment wasted, and if these _useless_ pests are gone by the time he's crushed his enemies, all the better. No more delays between him and his captured fairy.

The three Winx evaded the falling ceiling well enough, to his frustration, though covered in bruises and dust. They have to cower behind the water princess' morphix shields to evade his relentless attacks.

A sonic blast draws his focus towards the youngest Enchantix, who doesn’t know her limits yet.

“I'll hold him off!”, she yells, “You guys take care of Tecna!”

She is far too confident in her new powers, attacking him with wave after wave of sound, oblivious to the way he absorbs them. But her next words are an even graver mistake.

“Flora, go and get Bloom!”

 _Enough_.

He moves before he can consciously decide to do so, wrath fueling his spell as he releases a blast so strong the walls begin to crack. When he said that enchantix wings made good targets he didn’t lie: his magic breaks through her own and finds its aim.

“Musa!”

The fairy is hurled into the ceiling with a blood-curling scream and drops like a stone when the blast cuts off. He can see jagged gashes running through the plains of her wings before her transformation is torn from her, too damaged to hold any longer. The flower fairy cries out as she attempts catch her, smoke rising from her beaten friend.

“No! Please, wake up, _please!”_

If she's still breathing, she won’t be much longer. He raises his hand to finish them off, electricity crackling over his skin and-

“ _Musa!”_

A burst of flames hits him in the back, throwing him to the floor. Bloom, free and in full fairy regalia shoots past him and to her friends. She only has eyes for the fallen fairy, doesn’t send one more attack. Her fellow royals dismiss their shields and go back to the offense in her stead, stepping between her and him.

“No,” he growls, getting back to his feet and hurling a blast at them that shakes the castle walls. “Don’t you _dare!”_

A web of green lines blocks his way to her, infused with the princesses' fairy dust, courtesy of the purple-clad fairy barking instructions at the others.

“She's not- I can’t feel her anymore!”, the pink one cries out in reply and Bloom gives a sound that is somewhere between a sob and a snarl.

“Stella!”, she shouts, “Get us _out of here!”_

He roars a spell that shatters the net-shield into bits and sparks, but a blinding green light bursts from Bloom's hands and prevents him from getting any closer.

“Now!”, someone screams and the light is replaced by a flash of yellow, and when he can see again the hallway is empty.

On the floor lies the used-up Tear of Isis, drained of its color and magic.

Bloom is gone.

* * *

The palace guard of Isis does not dare to approach him until long after the sun has risen above the city of Serapis. Isis' capitol will wake to hushed whispers of an intruder in the palace, though the rumors will differ. Some say it was an assassination attempt on their beloved princess. Others say the dark wizard who terrorized Andros tried to steal their magic. And the few who happened to have been awake late at night spoke of a dragon, breaking through the ceiling of the castle to escape into the cosmos beyond. He hates that last one in particular.

Valtor watches the waking city from high above, standing in the bell tower of the palace. The morning air helps him regain his composure, to soothe his anger, and when a young, trembling guard is sent to inform him of an incoming transmission, he does not throw him off of the tower. An admirable feat, in his opinion. Instead he turns away from the scenery, calmly, and vanishes into thin air, reappearing in the wrecked throne room.

A communicator in the wall - one that didn’t get burned - projects the image of princess Diaspro into the room. She is waiting for him with obvious impatience, tapping her foot, and in her eyes is something unreadable she tries very hard to disguise.

“You,” she says without fanfare, “will tell me what went down, before I have to fire my entire guard for having _zero_ answers for me! What _happened_ here?”

Her voice grates in his ear, but he replies anyway.

“Exactly what we expected, your Highness. Prince Sky's former associates attempted to steal your magic, in order to steal your fiancé as well. My congratulations on your engagement, I should add.”

She waves him off.

“I know that! What I want to know is how it could lead to _this!”_

Her hand gestures towards the throne room, and the crumbled hallways leading to it. He turns away from her, tracing every scorch mark on the walls with carefully neutral eyes. A bitter smile creeps onto his lips.

“I had an encounter”, he reminisces, “with your least favorite Winx fairy. She was rather upset to learn of my involvement in her lover's change of heart.”

“Yeah, well too bad for her!”, Diaspro spits, “She's not getting him back! How in the Dragon's name did _that_ prompt you to crash my ceiling?!”

His smile widens.

“It didn’t.”

The look in his eyes makes her swallow, and she takes a step back.

“What... what is that supposed to mean.”

He hums pensively and looks up towards the shattered glass dome.

“Surely, an experienced politician such as yourself can divine my meaning well enough.”

She blinks twice, slowly. He can’t fault her, fairies aren’t known for permanent, destructive magic.

“She... _Bloom_ did that?!”

“The ceiling, yes. I'll have to take credit for the missing tiles and one or two burns, however.”

The unreadable emotion in her eyes loses its disguise. There is fear on her face, outright terror. He remembers reading about crashed festivities at Red Fountain some years ago, where a no-name fairy attacked the princess of gemstones. From what he pieced together, Bloom had left quite the impression on the usually unafraid fairy.

He tilts his head, sensing another weakness to exploit.

“I take it you haven’t fought her in a while?”

“I am to be queen,” she huffs, “I do not make a habit of dueling peasants. But... I’ve heard about her ancestry. Who hasn’t, the tabloids were full of it last year!”

Her planet had no close ties to Domino, but its rulers were always respected. Isis is home to many religious factions that still preserve the ancient ways and worship the Great Dragon, even though neither He nor His chosen resting place are present anymore. Valtor doesn’t know which one of the countless religions she favors, but Diaspro is obviously terrified of the prospect of having to face Bloom.

“My Tears?”, she asks, still facing the destroyed ceiling. He presents her with the drained jewel, now white instead of green.

“It will not be used against you any time soon.”

It can take years for the jewel's magic to regenerate, and as long as the shell remains on Isis to recharge, the princess can rest easy.

“How'd you manage that?”

“I maimed her friend.”

Attempted murder sounds too much like failure to his ears.

“Bloom decided saving her was more important than reclaiming her unfaithful prince.”

Diaspro looks at him, calculating. She seems uneasy at the idea of such cruelty towards a fellow fairy, but her self-preservation wins out in the end.

“Smart,” is her terse reply.

He expected her to distrust him more. To revoke her support, now that he has brought such havoc to her doorstep. He is prepared to move from flattery to threats if he has to, to remind her how indebted she is to him. But to his surprise, that won’t be necessary.

“Take whatever you want,” she says, voice resigned. “My soldiers are yours. My palace, my money and my connections if you need them. Do everything in your power to make sure Bloom and her troop of disasters do not get their hands on Sky, or my magic, or myself.”

Her fear of the dragon flame is even greater than her ego, greater than her caution regarding him. It’s ironic that even when Bloom steals from him, she somehow ends up giving him more power.

“How very generous of you,” he smiles. Diaspro sighs.

“I'm in too deep now,” she mumbles. “And I _never_ half-ass a project. It's what makes me the perfect queen.”

She looks at him, haughty to hide her fear.

“What can you do to guarantee Sky's safety? My guards told me at least three of the Winx are now Enchantix.”

“Fairy dust only works on dark spells,” he reminds her. He's actually spent quite some time on figuring out how to work around their new power, ever since princess Layla regained her sight. “The potion you used is powered by” - and he can’t believe he resorts to such clichés - “ _love_ ; so the magic is neutral at worst. The mark I gave him, however, is far darker in nature.”

The princess is well educated in the ways of magic, and follows his thought process soon enough.

“You mean it’s a distraction. It'll draw any healing spells in and use them up, so they'll gloss over the potions effect.”

For all her flaws, Diaspro is quite clever. She might just be his new favorite ally.

“The Tears might have cured even that,” he clicks his tongue, “but fairy dust? Your prince is as safe as can be.”

She breathes out, rubbing her temples.

“Good,” she says, “that’s good.”

The look she gives him is contemplative rather than calculating.

“You have delivered on your promises so far, so I will keep mine.”

She throws her hair behind her shoulders and assumes a more regal stance, banishing her concerns.

“I want my King, my crown and my well-deserved life as envy of all. Keep these pesky meddlers out of my way, and Isis is at your beck and call.”

It is a power he will not waste.

* * *

Valtor returns to Cloud Tower soon after that. He doubts Bloom will come back to Isis and try again, this time he has managed to frighten her. What a thoroughly inconvenient time for her to discover she has _some_ fear in her after all. There’s no word from his little spy either, so he cannot risk another attack on Alfea.

He is frustrated beyond belief, not just physically. With Bloom, with her friends, with himself. How can he devastate worlds in a few hours, but not hold onto a single, overconfident fairy? And how can he allow her this much power over him?

She was supposed to be entertainment, a challenge to distract him from the boredom of the accomplished. Something to raise into a formidable foe whose defeat would mark the end of his conquest, his grand victory at last. And if he enjoyed her in other ways until then, it only helped to demonstrate his power. A way to spite the enemies who wished to keep her from him, from her destiny.

But he finds himself wanting her. Craving her. Her defiance, her submission, the velvet warmth of her skin and the bite of her teeth. This must be some kind of cosmic joke on him, his mothers' doing perhaps, because Bloom is such a cruel, pyrrhic wish-fulfillment for an adversary.

He wanted her strong, and she is powerful. He wanted her fierce, and she burns through everything in her way. He wanted her bright, and she learns from his very own tricks, turns out to be _cunning_.

He's had impossible expectations, and somehow she managed to exceed them all. She delivered in each and every way - except one.

He wanted an enemy to destroy. And she makes her destruction an _unbearable_ thought.

It is downright offensive that she is everything he would value in an _ally_ , everything he could wish for, and yet she is doomed to fight him. Faragonda's narrow-minded principles and her misplaced loyalty to her friends do not allow for anything else, he isn’t even sure if he _wants_ anything else. Her opposition brings out the best in her, the Greatness in her, and fighting her is _electrifying_. He longs for her resistance almost as much as for her surrender, he doesn’t want to eradicate it. He wants it _in his_ _reach_ , always.

But every time he has her in his grasp, she slips through his fingers like water, like smoke.

He has to get beneath her skin, deeper than she is beneath his. Needs to burn himself into every fiber of her being. His hand runs over his neck, feeling the marks her teeth had left there. Satisfaction cools his anger. Because now he has confirmation of how far his hold on her goes, how deeply he affects her. He heard it from her own lips, how he is the very source for her desire. Even now he can still taste her on his tongue, can feel his skin warm wherever it touched her. Like phantom pains of a missing limb.

There's no use in delaying anymore.

He summons the Eye of Callisto, indulging his obsession once more. The sight of red hair makes his pulse spike.

She is wearing night clothes now, but shows no signs of rest. Her hands are tapping on her legs and she sits ramrod straight her chair, together with three more fairies. The room they are in does not look like their dorm, more like a hospital. The medical wing of Alfea, most likely.

A woman in a green apron steps into the room and the Winx shoot up.

“How are they? Did it work, will Musa be alright?”

The older fairy raises a hand, calming them.

“Flora's burns are treated, and she'll be up in no time. As for Musa, her injuries have been fully healed - miraculously well, in fact. But she'll have to sleep for a while and take it easy before she can transform again.”

The fairies breathe out in relief, and Bloom falls back into her chair.

“Thank god.”

“Don’t say that too soon.”

The woman slaps her hand against the wall with surprising force, and the students jump up.

“What were you thinking?!”, she hisses, cold fury in her eyes. Stella visibly shrinks.

“Griselda, we- “

“No, no more talking from you! All of you could have died tonight, your friend almost did! It was _that_ close, do you hear me?!”

She - Griselda - looks at them with the kind of exhaustion only war breeds.

“What can I do to make you finally stop sneaking out? What will convince you that you are not invincible? We are already weakened, without...” - she winces - “without Faragonda, and without Cloud Tower for support! Is that not danger enough for you?”

The young fairies are dead silent, none of them can look at her.

“You broke into another planets capitol, into its palace, with the intention to _steal magic!_ During a time of crisis, when Alfea needs all the help it can get! All that after you promised- you _promised_ me to stop looking for trouble, that you wouldn't seek that man out anymore!”

“We didn’t know he would be there!”, the short-haired fairy, Tecna, pleads with her. “We only wanted to help. To save Sky, to save Ms Faragonda!”

“At what _cost?!_ Do you think Faragonda would want you to die for her sake?”

He can’t quite figure out her age, but from the way she speaks he suspects she was a student herself, during the last war.

The princess of Andros raises her chin, obstinate.

“She'd do the same for us.”

“Layla, let it-”

“But it’s true! Yes, we shouldn’t have snuck out, and god knows we were unprepared, but at least we did something!”

Her teacher growls.

“Oh you did _something_ alright! You attacked a sovereign nation and almost got your friend killed!”

“That sovereign nation is allied with Valtor! Who is currently tearing apart my home world, _also a sovereign nation_ , and Magix and Solaria will be next! Why does no one _care_ about that?!”

Tecna places a hand on her shoulder, and she averts her face, overwhelmed.

“Can you really blame us for trying to save at least someone, in all this mess?”

Griselda sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“I do not doubt that your intentions are noble, girls. I know they are. But right now, we cannot afford nobility at the cost of your safety.”

She looks at Layla with a concern that stems of respect.

“I know how hard this must be on you. I will do my best to mitigate the damage of last night, but you must understand. With the kingdom of Isis, and by extension Eraklyon against us, the Council won’t help Andros any faster. We can’t _prove_ that Diaspro has joined forces with Valtor.”

The princess lets her head droop and Griselda turns away.

“Go get some sleep, now. I'll send Flora and Musa to get you as soon as they wake up. Tomorrow we plan how to save Faragonda, without risking anyone else.”

She disappears back into the medical room, and the Winx are dismissed. For a while, none of them speak. It's the princess of Solaria who eventually breaks the silence.

“She's right,” she says, dejected, “Let's go to bed. We can’t keep this up without enough rest, and we have to be ready.”

Layla sighs.

“I can’t. I'm still waiting for news from my parents, they've been acting all weird during our last talk.”

“I'll go with you to the comms,” Tecna agrees. “If they don’t pick up before noon, I'll drag you back to the dorms with me.”

“Fine. Just until noon, got it.”

The two of them wave their friends goodbye and trail off, leaving them to return to their rooms alone. Bloom hasn't said a single thing for the entire time he's been watching her, and she remains quiet when they arrive at their door.

“You okay there, Bloom?”

The blonde princess picked up on it as well, apparently.

“Hey, I'm sorry we couldn’t get Sky back. We won’t stop trying, I promise!”

Bloom looks up at her, chewing on her lip. It is distracting to say the least, and he almost misses it when she locks the door with a spell and straightens.

“We need to talk.”

His eyes narrow as she pulls Stella towards the couch, only to begin pacing in front of her like a caged tiger. He has a bad feeling about this.

“You are seriously freaking me out right now,” her friend comments, visibly concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“I... I'm not- Look, you are my best friend.”

Bloom stops in her tracks, facing the princess.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“Tell anyone what?”

She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t _dare_.

“I kissed Valtor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I love Valtor!  
> Also me: *ruins his day every chance I get*
> 
> I promise you, I will put some actual sex in this porn one day! But until then, I will blueball the fuck out of them both. Tough love, y'know?
> 
> If you have any questions regarding plot or their dynamic, come ask me on [my tumblr](https://rist-ix.tumblr.com/)! I post snippets and background info there.


	6. Shadowhaunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bloom ruins Stella's day ruins Valtor's day ruins Bloom's day. No one is having a good time, and Bloom has a certain shadow haunting her. Valtor is not impressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Friday again and I am back on my bullshit!  
> 9000+ words: This chapter sets my personal record and was basically writing itself, I’m so happy.
> 
> Dark Bloom is her own warning, approach with caution.

Cloud Tower, by nature, is a place of chaos. It has been home to countless generations of witches and will continue to house many more, ever-changing and adaptive. Rebellion and disorder are core aspects to any witch's magic, and the place that teaches them is no exception.

But when the Trix round a corner to enter Griffin's office, the room Valtor favors, it is not the familiar, natural disarray that greets them. Books are lying on the floor, fallen from their shelves, and shattered glass litters the floor beneath a busted chandelier. It looks as if an earthquake shook this singular room, and in the air, there are traces of magic so dark that even the Trix have to shudder. In the center of the chaos stands the wizard they were looking for, hands clawed into the table before him so hard the wood creaks beneath his fingers. His breathing is ragged with fury and his back is to them, brooding over the spying spell he took from Callisto.

The sisters exchange one look and decide that there are far more comfortable ways to die. In a rare moment of wisdom, they turn on their heels and make themselves scarce before they have to find out just how bad his mood is.

Valtor barely registers them. His eyes are trained entirely on the red-haired fairy behind the Eye, who was so foolish, so _foolish_ as to confide in her friend. To _betray_ him like this.

Stella of Solaria blinks in front of her.

“Come again?”

“I kissed him,” is Bloom's swift reply

He doesn’t know what he hates more. The fact that she tells her at all, or that she crams the magnitude of what she did into such ridiculously plain words.

Her friend blinks again.

“Is this a metaphor? Like that “dancing with the devil” saying you have on Earth? Because you know how long it takes me to pick up on them.”

He wants Bloom to back out, needs her to. Let her spin the words into something else, turn her lie by omission into true, intentional deception. But, true to character, she commits to it.

“No. No metaphor, just... it’s what happened.”

“Huh.”

Stella purses her lips, looking pensive. Her silence builds and builds, until Bloom is almost as unnerved as he is.

“Come on, Stella, say something!”

The princess looks up at her and folds her hands on the table. He leans forward, but her next words take him by surprise.

“Did you have crush on Icy?”

... _what?_

“What?!”, Bloom echoes his thoughts, dumbfounded.

“Oh, don’t look at me that way. You two had this _intense_ rivalry thing going on, with all those one-on-one duels and straight up _smoldering_ glares.”

Her gracious use of jazz hands does not do her words any favors.

“If you had a thing for her, you'd be at three of three years with a villain crush! Y'know, with your chemistry with Fake-Avalon, and Darkar's creepy little crush on your badly dressed Alter Ego. Look, I'm just sensing a theme here.”

Now it is Bloom who blinks in bewilderment.

“Stella, I- “, she shakes her head, “God, _no_ , I did not crush on Icy! And I don’t have a crush on Valtor either! And- okay, you got me with Avalon, that was not my proudest moment. But- _that's_ your reaction?!”

“Don’t judge me to soon, I'm still processing that little _tidbit_ you just dropped on me.”

It is very possible his age is catching up with him and he has officially lost touch with the current youth. But Bloom's very obvious confusion makes him think the princess of Solaria might just... be like that.

“Okay, let me make sure I got that right,” she says, tapping her chin. “You kissed Valtor, that Valtor. The one we've been fighting for a while now.”

Bloom nods.

“And you are entirely sure it was _you_ who kissed _him_? Because sometimes people can pressure you into something, very subtly, and make you think it was your choice- “

“I appreciate your concern, but I'm certain.”

Stella's hands slap onto the table.

“Then now I'm really out of ideas!”, she snaps, “Why in the name of the sun would you _do_ that?! He looks good I guess, but- but after everything he did to us, to _you!_ A-and what about Sky?”

“I did it for him!”, she exclaims, exasperated, and if her friend's reaction temporarily distracted him from his anger, Bloom’s words bring it back in full force. “He- Valtor had the Tear, and practically said to my face that Sky turning on us... becoming _like that_ was his doing, and that the damn thing could save him! So then we fought, but I couldn't- “

She swallows and looks down. He notices that she glossed over quite a few details there.

“Well, I kissed him. And managed to get the Tear while he was distracted.”

Her friend looks torn between angry and worried, but at her last words she gives and impressed whistle.

“Damn. You gotta be _really_ good at- “

“Stella.”

“Look, all I'm saying is that Sky is obviously a very lucky guy, and- “

“Stella!”

“Alright, alright, I'll focus. Sorry.”

She clears her throat.

“So, I'm not going to ask whether he kissed you back, because I know for a fact that he isn’t _blind_. But... Bloom. Are you sure you’re okay? He didn’t... hurt you?”

He is both pleased and insulted with how quickly she shakes her head, because he does think pleasure and pain are closely related when it comes to them. The sound of her tormented gasps still rings in his ear, impossibly sweet.

Stella takes a deep breath and rubs her temples, relieved.

“Good. Because I don’t think I’m up for an assassination for the next twelve hours.”

She straightens.

“Don’t worry, darling. I'll talk this over with the others, and we're not leaving you alone anymore when we- “

“No.”

Both he and the young princess still in surprise. Bloom looks at her, unwavering.

“You can’t tell the others. And I won’t let you baby me whenever we leave the school, I can take care of myself.”

“This isn’t about whether you can handle yourself,” Stella replies, taken aback. “If Valtor has- I don’t know, some kind of _interest_ in you, then you are in danger. What if he wants revenge for you tricking him?”

Oh, he does plan on retaliating. Though likely not in the way she thinks.

Bloom shakes her head again.

“I don’t think... I don’t know. If he wanted to hurt me, he would have done so by now, wouldn't he?”

Her voice is all but timid, and his grip on the desk tightens. He wants to kiss her for this foolish, wide-eyed, _misplaced_ faith she has in him. He wants to burn it out, to prove just how much he can hurt her without ever laying a finger on her.

The fairy of the sun furrows her brows, far more aware of the ways he can show cruelty.

“Bloom, he took your entire planet away. He _did_ hurt you. Don’t forget that.”

“Do you think I could?”

Now she looks angry, running her hands through her unkempt hair.

“Do you think I don’t spend _every day_ thinking about what I’m missing? That he's the one responsible, the only one who actually knows what happened, that day?!”

He bares his teeth to grin at her fury, hungry for more, but her friend does not allow her anger to grow.

“I just don’t want you to become reckless, Bloom. Today was... was a disaster.”

She sounds almost choked up. Immediately, Bloom's temper subsides and she sits down.

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left you behind, I should have come looking for you when you didn’t show up.”

Her friend waves her off, rubbing her eyes.

“You would've been captured anyway. Besides, we did a pretty good job with those guards! Layla managed to create this teeny little puddle without anyone noticing, and then Tecna electroshocked the guards through the water, and it was just overall incredibly awesome. Give us some credit.”

She takes her hand, turning serious.

“But you didn’t... you didn’t see what he was like, in that hallway. It was _scary_ , Bloom. We didn’t know where you were, if you were alright, and Valtor didn’t give us a second to breathe or hit back. Griselda was right, we could have died there.”

“But that’s exactly why you _shouldn’t_ try to shield me!”, her friend gives back. “I can hold him off. Just because I can’t get my Enchantix doesn’t mean that I'm fragile.”

He thinks his taunts regarding that unreachable form might have stuck with her.

 _Good_.

“And he wasn’t- wasn’t like that before. Maybe he was holding back, or testing me, but whatever it is that he wants from me, I don’t think he wants me dead yet.”

Her eyes are gleaming with the heat of battle.

“We can _use_ that!”

“Bloom, are you listening to yourself?”

The sun fairy seems more than unnerved.

“We're not using you as- as a punching bag, or bait, or whatever it is that you think you’re doing! This guy is _ancient!_ You tricked him, now he'll think twice on whether he'll go easy on you!”

Bloom bites her tongue, not looking away. Her friend frowns, a suspicion in her eyes that makes her shrink in on herself.

“You're not telling me everything, are you? Spit it out, my day is already ruined.”

The usually dauntless fairy looks down, biting her lip. He watches with rapt attention, once again almost missing her next words.

“Today... wasn't the first time, this, uh. Happened.”

 _No_.

No, she will _not_ retreat now. She lied to them, she chose him over her friends, and he will not allow her to take it back. He won't let- he will tear _everything_ around her apart, will burn her world down if he has to, but she _cannot_ -

“When,” is her friend's terse question. Bloom swallows.

“Polaris.”

Two stories further down, the Trix spontaneously decide to make a short trip to somewhere that is at least ten miles away from Cloud Tower, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the furious howl shaking the school.

In Alfea, Stella stands up with narrowed eyes.

“You said you didn’t find him.”

“I know, but- “

“You _lied_ to us! This is- Can’t you see how important this is?!”

She begins pacing through the room, but her anger is nothing compared to his own. He is leaving scorch marks where he grips the desk.

“One time counts as a trick, Bloom, two is a pattern. What the hell has gotten into you?!”

She comes to a stand before her, eyes harsh.

“What exactly happened on Polaris?”

“He...”, Bloom squirms in her seat, working up the courage to talk on as he tries desperately not to burn this room to the ground. “He hid me from the drakes with some sort of spell, but I couldn’t use magic without making myself a target, and then he...”

She struggles to form the words and he leans closer, desperate for her to back down.

“I mean, he...”

Her courage fails her, and her eyes close in defeat.

“...kissed me. And disappeared through a wall when he heard you coming.”

He breathes out, and his grip on the table relaxes just a hint. She does not reveal everything, keeps at least something to herself. He still has power over her.

Stella of Solaria tears at her prized hair.

“Why didn’t you just _tell_ us? Then we wouldn’t have split up today, wouldn’t have left you on your own.”

Exasperated, Bloom stands up.

“I don’t _want_ you to play bodyguards, it’s the opposite! You've seen what he can do, but he is not doing that to me. This is an _advantage_ , and we gotta make use of that for as long as we can. We can prevent what happened to Musa!”

On some level, he has to admire her ruthlessness. She noticed that he is pulling his punches, and has no qualms to use his desire for her against him. If he weren’t still seething with anger, he'd be impressed.

Her friend does not share his opinion.

“You think that's the solution? Bloom, what if the reason he was so unhinged on Isis was _because_ you kissed him!”

She is perceptive, he has to give her that.

”Sun and Stars, what if he decides he actually likes you and pulls a Darkar! He's a monster, you can’t, can’t just go off to make out with him!”

Bloom's face has turned a rather delightful shade of crimson.

“That's not what I was saying, and certainly not what I was planning to do!”

A shame, he thinks.

“You're completely glossing over the fact that I'm the only one of us who has a chance to get out unscathed, when it comes to Valtor.”

‘Unscathed’ is a very loose term, and here it is in all its interpretations _fatally_ incorrect.

“Stars, you're setting yourself up for disaster, Bloom! Just this once, get some common sense in that pighead of yours and stop running into danger.”

Bloom takes her hand, pleading.

“I need you to trust me, Stella. Please, don’t tell the others.”

Her friend looks at her with all but heartbreaking exasperation, before falling back into her seat.

“Damn it,” she groans, “ _Damn it!_ I'll never be able to live with myself if you get hurt.”

“I won't,” Bloom assures her with a confidence she absolutely cannot afford. “I promise.”

Stella clasps her hands over her face in despair.

“You can’t. You don’t know that, and I'll let you throw yourself into battle because you _think_ you're immune. This is horrible!”

She peeks through her fingers.

“And you are sure about this? You're sure you’re not just... I don’t know, looking for an excuse?”

Bloom's eyes grow hard. He can’t tell whether it's an act or the truth.

“Absolutely.”

“Well. Had to make sure.”

She sighs and lays her head on the table, exhausted.

“Please tell me he's at least a terrible kisser. Brandon and I have this bet that he's just evil 'cause he wants to compensate, and...”

Bloom makes a face that brings him _immense_ satisfaction, and her friend sighs again.

“Aw, shucks.”

The look she gives her is accusing.

“You do have a type, don’t you?”

 _Interesting_.

“And terrible taste.”

“Now you're just blowing this up. I'm here to fight him, not to propose.”

Isn’t she just adorable, in her undeserved confidence. He decides he'll allow her the illusion of an advantage. For now.

“Thank you, Stella.”, Bloom says and stands up to kiss her friend on the top of her head. “There's no one else I could have told this.”

The princess waves her off.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm awesome. Get some sleep before I come to my senses and just lock you in your room, like an evil stepmother.”

The raw tenderness and affection in Bloom's smile makes him want to destroy something. It doesn’t get better when she moves to close the door behind her.

“I love you,” she says so easily, so freely. “Good night.”

“G'night.”, her friend huffs, muffled through a pillow as she throws herself onto her bed. When the door falls shut, she does look up once more.

“Life would be so much easier if everyone just _listened_ to me, once in a while!”

She's talking to herself now. Valtor has lost interest and dismissed the Eye, releasing the desk from his claw-like grasp.

He can’t think about this right now. If he ponders on her words for just a second more he will tear Cloud Tower apart in his rage, and while that would grant him at least a little relief, it would be an unnecessary inconvenience later on. If he is to destroy something, it has to be something precious to his enemies.

Valtor turns away and summons the portal magic he stole from Omega, forcing all thoughts of red haired, traitorous fairies from his mind. He needs distraction, something to direct his anger on, and he knows exactly where he can find it.

With a flash of light, he leaves Magix behind and arrives on Solaria.

* * *

Countess Cassandra is a useful ally. She has influence, at least some experience with magic, and the perfect position to deliver him her planet on a silver platter. But, and this is something he does not tolerate, she is also a coward. Opportunistic when she has enough to gain, but bound for failure as soon as the slightest threat arises. A grave disappointment.

She stands on a small pedestal as servants bustle about, looking for flaws in her wedding dress, anything to improve until her grand day. By the way she orders them around one might think she were already queen, and her spoiled daughter's royal jewelry certainly doesn’t help the impression. The girl struts through the room, ignorant of the servants she holds up, and admires her reflection in any surface available.

Solaria is a rich world, a world of sunshine and eternal summer. The treasure chest of the dimension, and its rulers have been wielders of all kinds of celestial magic. Where Eraklyon boasts with an enormous military power, Solaria shines with a strong, innate magic that guarantees its safety from almost any invaders. Weapons can only do so much against true magic, after all, and many powerful mages, witches and fairies hail from the kingdom of the Sun.

The countess herself is a rare exception, rather weak for the descendant of a noble bloodline, but at least her daughter shows promise. A gifted student of the magical arts, brightest of her age and pride of her academy. Unfortunately, the both of them have drawn his ire and right now, he is not in the mood for forgiveness.

The power he bestowed upon them announces his presence with a pulsing of magic. They take notice as soon as he steps into the room, hidden in the shadow of a pillar. The countess' back straightens and she whirls around, looking for the intruder, while pushing the servant at her feet away.

“Get out!”, she hisses, eyes wide, “all of you!”

Her daughter steps closer to her as the servants hurry to stumble out of the room, closing the door behind them. Chimera has been far more wary of him than her mother, the last time, and she has the self-control to appear calm. If she weren’t so young and meaningless to Solaria's court, he would have preferred her over her mother as an ally.

“I see you have settled down well, in your new home,” he reveals himself and steps out of the shadow. The woman startles. “Is the palace to your liking, dear countess?”

Cassandra raises her chin and regains her composure. She obviously doesn’t know why he is here, if she gets over her fear so quickly.

“Valtor,” she greets him. “I was not expecting another visit so soon.”

He surveys the room, in all its gaudy splendor.

“That makes two of us. I did hope I would not have to return before your coronation, but alas...”

“My mother has her hands full with preparations,” Chimera speaks up, holding up quite well beneath the weight of his scrutiny. “If you want to revisit Solaria's second sun, you'll have to do so on your- “

“I have no need for it anymore,” he cuts her off and she flinches, hiding behind her mother’s arm. “And surely you have enough knowledge of the magic you will inherit to be aware of that fact.”

The countess swallows and draws his attention back to her.

“To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit, then?”, she asks, feigning confidence. “I was under the impression our business was concluded.”

She doesn’t have Diaspro's political finesse or her daughter's caution. No goals or motivations besides a vague lust for power and fame, and certainly not the common sense to tell her she should not have been so careless as to assume.

“Our business?”, he asks, a cruel smile on his lips. “You wound me, Countess. I thought we had a _partnership_ , one of mutual trust, after we helped each other in our hours of need.”

She takes a step back, his sarcasm cutting.

“Then again, trust is a strong word.”

His gaze wanders to the door to the throne room, where a bewitched King Radius holds court.

“Especially after you almost squandered what I so graciously gifted you.”

The festivities on Eraklyon could have cost the king's life and ruined weeks of manipulation - all thanks to his fiancée’s cowardice. Finally, there is trepidation in her eyes.

“We were under attack,” she hurries to defend herself, “There was no time to react, Erendor should be ashamed to risk his guests' safety like this! He's the one you should pay a visit, for endangering your most valuable allies' lives and- “

The look he gives her makes her shut up immediately, worry growing into naked fear.

“Perhaps I was not clear enough,” he says with a dangerous glint in his eyes. “Your only value to me is your relation to Solaria's king. Without him you are useless to me.”

The lines of his symbol on their necks glow in his presence, a reminder.

“And I do not waste my power on those who are useless. I _drain_ them.”

Her fear is replaced by outrage.

“How dare you speak to me that way,” she seethes, and he smiles darkly in anticipation. Coming here was the right decision.

“I could have you thrown out of my castle within seconds! One word from me and you'll be back in Omega with all the other criminal scum!”

He has to laugh at that, and the countess stops spitting threats for long enough to suspect she might have made a mistake. Oh, this will be _fun_.

“Countess,” he chuckles, summoning magic into his palms, “Your arrogance is truly amusing.”

The room seems to darken, and the doors lock themselves with a click, cutting off all hope of escape. The queen-to-be looks around, realizing the gravity of her lapse in judgement.

“Do you think you have any power left, without me?”, he asks, basking in her fear, “You carry the mark of Valtor on your skin, and you think you can _threaten_ me?”

Cassandra backs away from him, trembling and her noble features contorted in fear. Chimera at least has some dignity left. She raises her scepter, panic in her eyes, and ready to start a fight that is sure to see her killed. It doesn’t come that far.

He clenches his hand into a fist and the mark on her neck lights up a deep red. Her staff clatters to the floor, forgotten, and she _screams_ as the magic she accepted out of her own free will turns against her.

“Chimera!”

The countess rushes to her side, only to flinch back as she sees the extent of his power. Pale skin turns into dark scales, carefully styled hair into a writhing mane. Her precious daughter twists and distorts into a beast of horns and hooves, goat feet and growling; _betrayed_ by her own powers. The royal jewelry bursts and rolls over the ground, all but exploding around her expanding form. She tries to reach for her mother with mangled claws, and wails when she only continues to back away, horrified. Her daughter's voice is incapable of words, emitting only garbled, monstrous noises befitting of the creature she is named after.

He keeps her that way for a few delightful moments, before releasing his hold on her magic and allowing her to turn back. The poor child is whimpering on the floor as her body regains its humanity, and she scampers up to cling to her mother.

“Mommy!”

The countess looks at him in sheer terror, one hand clutching her daughter’s hair, the other shooting up to cover the mark on her own neck. She might not be as intelligent as Diaspro, but she is smart enough to realize he can transmute her just as easily. That hers and her daughter's life are entirely in his hands.

“I think we both got a little carried away, here,” Valtor hums and gives her an ironic smile, as if he merely raised his voice a little. “Perhaps we should start over. Reintroduce ourselves.”

He bows, mockingly.

“My name is Valtor,” he smiles, “and you will _do as I say_.”

The countess gulps, but hurries to nod when he comes closer.

“Wonderful,” he says with the same silken voice he'd used before his little threat, “It would have been a shame to lose my... 'most valuable allies', after all.”

Chimera shivers and hides behind the countess.

“What do you want from us,” the young sorceress whimpers and her mother hisses.

“Quiet, Chimera,” she snaps, eye twitching.

He waves her off.

“An excellent question, little princess. No need to be afraid, I will merely ask of you what you already wish for yourselves.”

His gaze darkens.

“Keep Radius alive and well, for as long as I tell you. No more blunders like on Eraklyon: If he dies, you will share his fate.”

Cassandra is quick to nod, now that the initial shock has worn off.

“O-of course, as you wish. Is there anything else we can do for you?”

She seems to want to compensate, eager to return to his good graces. He smiles.

“There is indeed.”

He thinks of secrets shared, of lies revealed, and of a blonde fairy who is far too important to someone she has no right to.

“Stella of Solaria,” he says, eyes narrowed, “needs to lose _everything_. She may never set foot on this planet again without every weapon of your guards trained on her. Is that clear?”

This time, there is a far more selfish eagerness on the countess' face.

“Consider it done.”

He smiles and raises his hand, summoning a forgotten pendant off of the ground. He thinks he recognizes this one, an antique talisman Griffin had once fawned over. Chimera wouldn't know how to use it anyway.

“Then I shall not impose on your hospitality any longer.”, he bids his farewell. “You have a wedding to plan, after all.”

Daylight returns to the room as he turns around, and the locked doors swing open. Passing servants murmur about the frightened look in their future queen's eyes, but no one sees the man disappearing through a wall.

“Milady?”, one of them asks from a safe distance. “Is there something we can do for you?”

Cassandra straightens and slowly pushes her daughter away, who still is still shivering and clutching her neck.

“Yes,” she says, voice firm, “I believe King Radius wants to make an announcement.”

That day, Solaria revokes its princess's birthright, and he regains control of the kingdom the Sun.

* * *

Valtor returns to Cloud Tower in far better spirits than he left it in. His fury has cooled enough for him to ponder over what he has witnessed, and he comes to the conclusion that he has made a mistake. He has underestimated the Winx and their bonds to each other, and knows far too little about them.

He should have known Bloom would crack, sooner or later. She is young, after all, and still so dependent on her friends. But he thought her fear of losing them would work to his advantage, that the risk of their rejection was enough to seal her lips.

He miscalculated.

If he wants Bloom, he'll have to learn about her surroundings as well.

Which is why, when the Trix arrive at Cloud Tower's doorstep, he calls Stormy to him into the library. Her sisters are not sure whether they should be jealous of her - or relieved that it’s not _them_ he wants to see, after his outburst.

“Uh, hey there!”, the witch of winds stammers when the door falls shut behind her. “Everything okay? Are you mad at me or something?”

He gestures towards the seat in front of him and turns a page of the chronicle he's studying.

“What makes you think that?”

It is very possible the Trix managed to mess up again, while he wasn’t looking.

“N-nothing!”, she hurries to insist. “It's just that... well, you seemed kinda angry, earlier, and if you're giving out spells you usually call for Icy or Darcy, so...”

She scoffs and crosses her arms.

“I get it, y'know? They're the model students. But I'm plenty capable too!”

He closes the book. It's true that he hasn’t paid much attention to her. Icy is their unchallenged leader, and Darcy has an intellect to rival Griffin's. Stormy, on first glance, is merely the brawn of the group and he thought her to be redundant more than once.

Right now, however, she is the most useful to him. Darcy would figure out his motivations far too quickly, and Icy's rivalry with Bloom taints her objectivity. Additionally, Stormy has an eye for combat. She might not be particularly observant on the daily, but in a fight, she is the one who recognizes weak links the fastest. He would be a fool to dismiss her expertise, now.

And he doubts her sisters know that Stormy feels left behind. They're a ruthless bunch, but their loyalty to each other is even greater than that of their ancestors.

It is something he will observe closely.

“I know that,” he assures her, mending this fissure before it shows. “In fact, I have been so generous to your sisters because you already have the advantage of strength. I am merely... evening the ground, between you three.”

His words are a calculated mix of half-truths, but they serve their purpose. Stormy lights up immediately.

“Really?! I thought- Well, doesn’t matter!”

She flops into the chair opposite of his, throwing her legs over an armrest.

“What can the strongest Trix of all do for you?”

He smiles.

“It has come to my attention that I have misjudged my enemies.”

Putting the chronicle aside, he leans back in his chair.

“I was hoping your experience in fighting the Winx could be of use.”

“Sure thing!”, she beams, “No one's fought them more often than me. What do you wanna know?”

He leans forward.

“Everything.”, he demands, “From your first fight to your last, _everything_.”

Stormy blinks a few times, taken aback by his intensity. Then she shrugs and turns to face him.

“Eh, whatever. You'll see, this fluffy head right here can fit so much knowledge in it.”

And she is right. Two hours later, he knows of every battle the Trix ever had against the fairies, and of the one they fought together. When he sends her off, she is sporting a certain solarian pendant that can charge her blasts twice as fast, and she wastes no time to show her sisters.

Valtor returns to his rooms, seeking silence. The past day has been taxing, and his plans cannot move forward until he has found the chronicles of Alfea. For now, all he can do is wait. And while he waits, there is one more spell in his arsenal he has been dying to use again.

* * *

Ohm's magic pulls him through space and time, through plains not accessible to most others, and guides him to his destination. Now that he has had his revenge, there is nothing keeping him from invading her dreams once again.

The last time he visited Bloom, she dreamed of lush gardens and clear skies.

That is not what he finds today.

He looks around, assessing. He is surrounded by dark stone walls, crumbling with age, and the sky above him is tinted an ominous, hazy red. Despite visiting nearly every populated planet in the magical dimension, he does not recognize this one.

He takes a step towards where he suspects Bloom, only to be thrown back by a torrent of shattered memories. The mindscape shudders around him, breaking and resealing just as fast, an unstable kaleidoscope of images. Laughter echoes through the ruined stone arches, familiar yet alien. It grates on his ears.

He walks through the volatile dreamscape, towards the source. Instead of growing more stable around her, the fissures of her world seem to converge on Bloom, the epicenter of the nightmare.

There are bodies on the floor. Their features shift from fairies to specialists, from teachers to strangers with every reformation, but there are enough to allow for a steady supply of familiar faces. He is surprised by the amount of metaphorical bloodshed Bloom's mind can conjure - there's no actual blood, of course. Dragon Fire cauterizes just as well as it kills.

She was efficient.

From the center of the fallen rises a structure, reminiscent of a sacrificial pyramid. He transports himself closer with a thought and finds... he's not sure what he finds.

Bloom, yet not.

Her body flickers in and out of view, sometimes cowering on the floor, sometimes hovering above the carnage. Sometimes there are chains on her wrists, sometimes flames in her palms. Her dream-self is fickle, everchanging, unsteady. She is not aware of herself, if the nightmare can shift her form like this.

Her form is a matter of its own. Instead of cyan and gold, she is clad in a blue so dark it seems to swallow all light. There are tears in her eyes; their iris yellow and glowing, their pupils slits.

He has an idea of where they are, now. The one place he swore to never set foot in, mainly because he knew he wouldn’t leave it alive.

Relix.

How inconvenient, he knows almost nothing about it. Just that Darkar, his mothers' master, had wanted its power.

Valtor, despite his habit of robbing worlds of their magical knowledge, considers himself a scholar. The ancestral witches saw little difference between ruling the dimension and destroying it; he on the other hand was determined to hoard the knowledge they would have sacrificed. He knows that both Shadow and Dragon Fire are required to obtain this realms treasure. And he also knows that his mothers would not have hesitated to tear his part of that Flame right out of him, if it pleased Lord Darkar. Maternal love at its finest.

Bloom seems to have her own fears of this place. Stormy described the battle at Shadowhaunt in vivid detail, and did not leave out how Darkar betrayed them in favor of a new asset. She told him of a twisted Bloom, infected with shadows that were the antithesis of her very essence and turned her into the Phoenix' tool. A creature that cared only for carnage and cruelty.

He thinks of the traces of darkness buried in her mind, scarred over but never fully healing. A shadow virus, especially when administered by an entity as powerful as Darkar, would be a fitting explanation.

The venomous laughter from before rings through the temple of Relix and she screams, straining against the chains that reappeared around her wrists.

“Let me go, _let me go!”_ , she howls, trashing against the black metal. Claw-like nails cut into the skin of her palms and tears are running over her face. “Stop!”

The world around her seems to shatter like glass, mending itself into new horrors. The burned and beaten bodies of her friends are rattled by the mindquakes, lifeless like toys.

“Killed them,” a voice sings, so unlike hers yet identical. “Killed them all. How fun!”

“I didn’t! _I didn’t!_ I would never!”

Her shadow slithers over the ground and peeks at her through glowing eyes.

“Wanted to. Did it. Same difference, same difference.”

The laughter comes again, rather annoying at this point, and her shadow lifts off of the ground to coalesce into a perfect copy of her current self.

“Was fun. Felt good.”

She drags a pointed black nail over her chained counterpart's cheek, tilting her head with a detached curiosity.

“Should try again. Never give up, right?”

“Don't touch me!”, Bloom - (the real one? The _realer_ one) - cries, terrified in a way he had not thought her capable of. “Please, _go away!”_

Her copy waves her off.

“Away. Here. Same difference, same difference.”

Bloom falls to her knees, the shackles pulling her down.

“Please,” she sobs, “please.”

The shadow Bloom, _Dark Bloom_ , snickers and he decides he has observed for long enough. Her terror is only enjoyable when summoned by his own actions, after all. He steps onto the pyramid and the shadow whirls around.

“As entertaining as your rhetoric aptitude may be,” he scoffs, “I'm afraid it’s my turn to torment her now.”

He looks at the construct of her subconscious with deliberate indifference.

“ _Shoo_.”

Dark Bloom bares her teeth, pointed and sharp, in what could be either a smile or a threat.

“The spark,” she hisses, manic hunger in her reptilian eyes. “Yes. Yes! The spark.”

She reaches a claw out to his face and he swats it away, disgusted. She cackles again.

“So mean! Kill it too. Yes. Light it up, snuff it out. So fun, so _painful!_ Same difference.”

He's had enough of her.

Dark Bloom launches herself at him with sharpened claws, and he rolls his eyes as he steps aside. Ohm's magic ripples from his hands, the only magic he can truly use in this plain. A quick wave of his hand and Dark Bloom is cut in half, shadows bleeding from her wound. The nightmare shrieks as it collapses in on itself, taking the ruins of Relix with it, back into the depths of her mind. Darkness replaces the shattered dream, soothes the fractures in her mindscape and eats away at the remnants of red skies and dusty stone.

There's only the two of them left: he, and the true Bloom, cowering before him. An interesting change of pace for sure.

Her breathing is heavy, pained, and she looks up at him through watering eyes. She is petrified, a terror in her eyes he has never seen on her before and doubts he ever will again. It is an all but humiliating thought, that he will never be able to horrify her more than her own subconscious. Especially considering how ridiculous her fears are: her dark counterpart was barely more than cryptic half-sentences and a penchant for gleeful cackling. And hair that hasn’t been brushed in a while.

All in all, rather underwhelming.

Bloom seems to think differently; she is still shivering on the ground and he's not quite sure she recognized him. He frowns and kneels down before her, wanting to check whether she is conscious enough to understand him. But once again, she takes him by surprise.

She shoots forward with a broken little sound, clutching the front of his shirt and burying her face in his chest. Her momentum almost throws him back, less than the gesture itself, however. Bloom is _shaking_ against him, either unaware or uncaring that it is her enemy she seeks comfort in, and despite the fact that this is a dream, their connection warms at their closeness.

He is still furious with her. Livid that she confided in her friend. He hasn’t forgotten that. But even then he cannot deny her his proximity, his touch. Not when she so readily asks for it, out of her own free will.

He puts his arms around her and draws her closer, running his hand through her red locks. The corrupted fairy-form dissolves beneath his touch, the blacks and blues and purples fade into her usual cropped sweater and jeans.

“It's not me,” she whispers into his shirt, feverish in her fear. He can feel her lips move against his skin through the fabric. “It’s not me, it’s not...”

He makes a soothing sound into her hair and tightens his hold on her, far too satisfied by this. She buries herself in his arms, like he is her only shelter in the world, and stars, if he doesn’t like the idea. To be her only safe haven, her only reprieve. To have her need him in such fundamental ways.

Despite what she said to her friend, in this moment she truly is fragile. A delicate thing in his embrace, so delightfully vulnerable, yet not pulling away. Weakness before him is something she would never allow in the waking world, and so he will revel in this moment for as long as it may last.

Her hands let go of his shirt, only to circle his waist and dig into the back of his vest, beneath his coat. She does not look up, or around, completely lost in him. For now he is her entire world, the only safety from her gleeful little demon. To say he could get used to this would be an understatement.

He buries his hand in her hair to keep her close, grounding her in what is not quite reality, but at least not as long gone as Relix. Their connection hums around them, pleased. Even though he knows his body is a good few miles away from here in Cloud Tower, her trembling warmth in his arms feels realer than anything else. It soothes the aching of her absence, and when she nestles closer it vanishes completely. He distantly remembers he came here to confront her, but there's no rush, is there? There will still be time for that later.

Right now, he has her ragged breathing against his chest, her soft hair beneath his chin, and that is enough. His eyes fall shut, content.

“I'm not- “, she cries into him, helpless, “I didn’t- “

“Shsh...”, he makes and pulls her closer, his coat falling around her as if to hide her. It's not often he finds himself comforting someone. Sometimes maybe, when he has taken his threats too far and needs to appear amicable once more. Griffin once, after she lost her parents. But holding Bloom is an entirely different experience.

How much must her Shadow scare her, for her to be this beside herself with terror? He himself has outgrown such fear centuries ago, and he doesn’t quite remember how to ease the aftereffects of nightmares. But her trembles seem to subside as he draws patterns into her back, runic spellwork that doesn’t work on this plain, and symbols of languages that are no longer spoken. Slowly, Bloom calms.

Her breathing evens out, and her hands on his back don’t grip the fabric with as much force as before. He misses her desperation already.

She pulls back just an inch, her forehead still resting against his collar bone, and exhales shakily. When she looks up, she seems almost disoriented.

“You...”, she croaks, brows furrowing, “Are you... real?”

While he would love to let her believe that she dreamed of him on her own, his need for her to be _aware_ of him is greater. He sighs, the moment obviously nearing its end.

“That, my dear, depends entirely on your definition.”

Her gaze darkens.

“It _is_ you.”

He enjoys the startled distress in her eyes almost as much as her helplessness before. She attempts to step away, but his hand cupping the back of her head pulls her right back in.

“Ah-ah,” he chides, “Your fearless image is already ruined. Might as well commit to it.”

She growls, the sound of it vibrating through his chest, but does not fight him. Perhaps the nightmare still has its claws in her spirit, or perhaps she doesn’t mind his embrace as much as she would have him believe. He is satisfied either way.

“How did you- “, she cuts herself off as she notices that the blackness of their surroundings is fading into some kind of hallway. Her dream recovers from his devastation, building a harmless, familiar scenery. Alfea, most likely.

“I'm dreaming, aren’t I? You're not _really_...”

“There? Not quite, and just enough. As your...” - he scoffs - “... _eloquent_ little shadow likes to say: Same difference.”

She freezes, eyes widening, and flinches back to look at him in a mix of anger and alarm.

“Bad dream?”, he asks innocently, his smile ironic. He cannot help but push her, now that she has revealed this convenient little weakness to him.

Bloom swallows.

“She's not- That wasn’t me,” she says, and he sees in her eyes that she _thinks_ she is lying. That she believes the opposite and is merely protecting herself. He traces the line of her jaw and gives a little scoff.

“Of course not. Do you think I don’t know how these spells work?”

Her eyes widen, surprised, and something minute about her posture changes. Like she had expected opposition and taunts. The fact that he meets her presumed lie with agreement seems to give her a sliver of cautious, unexpected hope. He _is_ known for his vast magical knowledge, after all. 

His veiled assurance soothes her, and she does not pull away when he caresses her cheek, just beneath her eyes - blue, not yellow. Vivid, lively blue.

“Do you?”, she blurts out. “Know this spell, I mean.”

He gives a distracted “Hmm”, preoccupied with twirling a strand of her bangs around his finger. He has taken a liking to her hair, it seems.

“Valtor.”

His name rolls from her lips like poetry, like music. She says it not nearly often enough - except for the time he so desperately wanted her to keep quiet.

His grip on her hair tightens.

“Tell me,” he says, eyes darkening, “why should I answer your questions, when you would only relay my knowledge to your little friends?”

“Why do you do anything?”, she shrugs, uncaring, “I’ve given up on guessing.”

She is taunting him, she must be. How quickly she recovers from the fear that had paralyzed her just seconds ago, or maybe she is merely putting up a front.

This is less of the instinct-driven Bloom he encountered the last time, in her dreams. Back then, she was all but feral in her provocations of him. Now she is more in control of herself, and he thinks her behavior might depend on how deeply she is asleep.

It would be an interesting theory to test, if he weren’t still seething at her betrayal.

“Why,” he asks, his grip on her arm tightening, “did you tell them.”

She looks up at him with a grim smile.

“Because I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

Not for the first time he wonders if she has a death wish.

“One might think you would know better by now,” he hisses and pushes her back, until her back hits the newly formed wall. Another thing he has grown fond of: her, cornered. “Haven’t I made it clear enough, yet? I am _more_ than willing to let your friends carry the consequences of your insolence.”

Her smile fades into a scowl.

“You hurt Musa,” she gives back, “So I snitched to Stella. _You_ provoked this, not me. We are even - generously spoken.”

Her hands come up to grip his upper arms, not pushing back yet but preparing to. Her eyes shine with a bold gleefulness, so reckless in her newfound power.

“Be grateful I didn’t tell them more.”

“Careful, Bloom.”, he growls, voice low. She is playing a _very_ dangerous game now. But of course, she doesn’t listen.

“I still have plenty of things to tell, after all.”, she talks on casually, a smirk tugging at her lips. “The details of Callisto. Of Polaris. And Isis, now. Our...” - she has to struggle to say the word - “... _connection_. Oh, and that you can apparently get into my head. I think that would be the first thing I'd tell.”

The fact that he has her pinned against the wall does not seem to deter her. Her blonde friend was right, common sense is an alien concept to Bloom.

He leans down, eyes burning with anger, but keeps his voice down.

“Would you tell them, though?”, he asks softly, seriously, and _that_ seems to intimidate her. “Would you tell them the _truth?_ ”

He runs his fingertips over the tender skin on her neck, and notes how she has to suppress a shudder.

“Of what you did? With enthusiasm, I might add.”

“I would,” she says, but swallows in trepidation. “I _will_.“

Shaking her head, she regains her composure and glares up at him.

“I'm not gonna like it, of course, but I know that you will like it even less. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the last time you invaded my dreams, you did pretty much say that.”

She gives him a smirk, so infuriating in her taunts, so tantalizing. Using his own words against him, the sly little beast.

“I lie for you so reliably, wasn’t that it? Well, not anymore.”

“I am warning you,” he says darkly, and she grins. His hand on her neck tightens around it, a threat and a promise, but she pushes on anyway. Stars, _of course_ she does.

“And I am warning you! Every spell of yours that hits my friends is a secret revealed.”

“You,” he says almost breathlessly, torn between fury and arousal, “are so _arrogant_.”

And he absolutely _adores_ it, drunk on the way she meets him in his menace. _This_ is the Bloom he craves, the darkness he wants from her. Not some maniacal mirror-version that can't form a full sentence in between fits of cackling.

“What would your friends say?”, he hisses, pressing against her greedily. “Your _precious beloved_ , if he could take his eyes off of Diaspro for long enough?”

Her smile turns into a snarl, just for a moment, before she gets herself under control again.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, stubborn in her anger. “I think it would hurt you more than them.”

He likes what her words imply. That his reaction would be more important to her than her friends'. On some level she already knows, _accepts_ , that none of the others matter as much as the two of them. They are secondary interests at best.

“Are you that eager to wound me, then?”, he asks, _purrs_ , and leans even closer. “You seemed so much more... amiable, when we last saw each other.”

She can’t help the faint blush that rises to her cheeks, but raises her chin in defiance.

“You mean in the hallway,” she says sweetly, “when I set your back on fire?”

He clicks his tongue and tightens his hold of her throat. It does little to frighten her, he is even beginning to think she likes it. Likely not as much as he does, however.

“Do try to play nice. I am still contemplating whether I should humor your attempt at threats.”

“It’s not a threat,” she says, almost growling at his patronizing tone. “It’s a simple, factual statement.”

She is obviously attempting to sound ominous. But she was shaking in his embrace just minutes ago, and he is not above provoking her fears.

“If you wish to appear menacing,” he suggests and raises an eyebrow, “perhaps you should ask your cackling counterpart for advice. Though I do consider a shadow virus to be cheating.”

She blanches, wildly misinterpreting his intentions.

“You- Is that your plan?”

The look in her eyes is an enticing mix of panic and outrage.

“I swear to you, if you think you can- I healed myself, I can do it again!”, she snarls. “We _killed_ the last one who tried to use me! Don’t think I wouldn’t do the same to you!”

She lashes out like a cornered animal, and he knows he has hit a nerve. He savors her paranoia for a few seconds, before taking mercy on her.

“Don't insult me, Bloom,” he chuckles. “I have no need for such underhanded tricks. These kinds of spells are beneath me.”

When it comes to her, at least.

“I don’t believe you.”

Her words are unexpectedly cutting, and he glares at her. She meets his gaze with unconcealed distrust, and he remembers the conversation he spied on earlier.

“Why?”, he scoffs. “Because your little friend thinks I would follow the Shadowphoenix' example? That I would stoop so low?”

Doubt erodes the stubborn look in her eyes, and his grip on her softens.

“You, my dear, are the opponent of a lifetime,” he says without a hint of sarcasm or deception. His honesty, or perhaps the compliment itself seems to surprise her. “I would not taint that by turning you into the rather unimpressive maniac you are so scared of. _Unreasonably_ scared, in my opinion.”

The mediocre little menace doesn’t deserve her fear, really. Not when _he_ exists.

She eyes him with lingering suspicion.

“You say you... wouldn’t try to turn me?”

The smile he gives her is predatory.

“If I wanted you by my side,” he says, and that tempting train of thought is a _very_ slippery slope, “I wouldn’t _need_ any spells.”

He brushes her hair behind her ear, relishing the way her eyes widen. Slowly, deliberately he leans in until his lips hover over the shell of her ear.

“I would seduce you the old-fashioned way.”

He would. Stars, he _could_. The hair of her neck rises as goosebumps spread over her skin; fear forgotten. He'll never tire of the way she reacts to him, despite her anger or dread just seconds ago. How open she is to him.

“I'd make you come to me out of your own volition,” he says, softly, and his arm snakes beneath her arm and around her waist. “With no curse or compulsion to excuse your choice.”

She shudders when his fingertips caress the bare skin of her back, featherlight.

“And I would never,” he says, lips ghosting over her temples - “never,” - he kisses her brow - “ _never_ let you go again.”

He can feel her shaky breath against his collarbone, her fingers burrowing into his sleeves. She is so close, so wonderfully close to him, and he moves lower until their faces are even. His mouth is but inches from hers, and he hungers to taste her again. The way she looks at him, with such anxious breathlessness, almost makes him cave.

“So no.”, he ends his little monologue, pulling back. “It's not shadows that you have to fear from me.”

She blinks, taken aback by his sudden absence, and he has to smile. For once, it is her that is left wanting, and by the scowl on her face she does not appreciate the feeling.

“Good- “, she clears her throat, and looks anywhere but at him, “Good to know.”

He takes hold of her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze.

“Isn’t it?”, he hums in smug satisfaction. Her cheeks are red, her pupils blown wide, and her eyes drop to his lips more than once, as if magnetized.

“You only have to ask, Bloom,” he says, tracing her full lower lip with his thumb. How he wants to close the distance between them, to claim compensation for what her pesky friends ruined on Isis. But he won’t. No, this time she'll seek him out on her own, she'll be the one to crave - and _admit_ it.

Her lips part and close again, torn. Tempted.

A rumble goes through her dreamscape, and their surroundings begin to fade. She is waking up, and of course at the most frustrating point possible. He sighs deeply, his forehead falling against hers in defeat.

“Next time, then.”

Her eyes widen as the Alfea corridor around them vanishes, like mist in the sun. Bloom opens her mouth and for a few glorious moments her grasp around him tightens, as if to keep him there. But reality pulls her away before she can speak, and when Valtor opens his eyes again, it is to the sight of his rooms in Cloud Tower.

He sighs again, and looks towards the eastern windows. Towards Alfea.

“Next time,” he repeats to himself.

And it is a _promise_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What if I took dark bloom and made her absolutely unhinged. Would that be fucked up or what.
> 
> I am evil. This is my longest chapter yet and it doesn't even have any smut. Somebody do the Shrek meme.  
> But: Valtor made a promise he intends to keep, so at least there’s that to look forward to.
> 
> I know that if you saw the teaser on [my tumblr](https://rist-ix.tumblr.com/) you were probably hoping for some steamy Valtor/DarkBloom action. May I propose that instead of being into Dark Bloom, he'd be wildly jealous? Like, really territorial over being Bloom's nemesis. How dare she fear anything else. Especially something with such horrible hair!  
> Bloom also has literally the best friend ever.  
> Stella could kill a bitch and Flora would help her hide the body.


End file.
